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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caught by the Turks, by Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Caught by the Turks
+
+Author: Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2011 [EBook #37343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAUGHT BY THE TURKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Watson, Ross Cooling, Mark Akrigg and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
+http://www.pgdpcanada.net ((This file was produced from
+images generously made available by The Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries))
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CAUGHT BY THE TURKS
+
+  BY
+  FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN
+
+
+  WITH PORTRAITS AND PLANS
+
+
+  LONDON
+  EDWARD ARNOLD
+  1919
+  [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  LADY PAUL
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                                        PAGE
+     I. CAPTURE                                     1
+    II. A SHADOWLAND OF ARABESQUES                 25
+   III. THE TERRIBLE TURK                          42
+    IV. "OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION"                 56
+     V. THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS            75
+    VI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON                   95
+   VII. THE COMIC HOSPITAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE      102
+  VIII. OUR FIRST ESCAPE                          122
+    IX. A CITY OF DISGUISES                       140
+     X. RECAPTURED                                159
+    XI. THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE          172
+   XII. OUR SECOND ESCAPE                         198
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             PAGE
+
+  THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE AT PSAMATTIA, CONSTANTINOPLE      137
+
+  THE AUTHOR AS A GERMAN GOVERNESS               _facing p._  154
+
+  THE AUTHOR AS A HUNGARIAN MECHANIC             _facing p._  170
+
+  THE SQUARE OF THE SERASKERAT, CONSTANTINOPLE                213
+
+
+
+
+  CAUGHT BY THE TURKS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  CAPTURE
+
+
+Half an hour before dawn on November the thirteenth, 1915. . . .
+
+We were on an aerodrome by the River Tigris, below Baghdad, about to
+start out to cut the telegraph lines behind the Turkish position.
+
+My pilot ran his engine to free the cylinders from the cold of night,
+while I stowed away in the body of the machine some necklaces of
+gun-cotton, some wire cutters, a rifle, Verey lights, provisions, and
+the specially prepared map--prepared for the eventuality of its falling
+into the hands of the Turks--on which nothing was traced except our
+intended route to the telegraph lines west and north of Baghdad. Some
+primers, which are the explosive charges designed to detonate the
+gun-cotton, I carefully stowed away in another part of the machine, and
+with even more care--trepidation, indeed--I put into my pockets the
+highly explosive pencils of fulminate of mercury, which detonate the
+primers which detonate the gun-cotton.
+
+Then I climbed gingerly aboard, feeling rather highly charged with
+explosives and excitement.
+
+For some time the pilot continued to run his engine and watch the
+revolution meter. The warmer the engine became, the colder I got, for
+the prelude to adventure is always a chilly business. Unlike the engine,
+I did not warm to my work during those waiting moments. At last,
+however, the pilot waved his hand to give the signal to stand clear, and
+we slid away on the flight that was to be our last for many a day. The
+exhaust gases of our engine lit the darkness behind me with a ring of
+fire. I looked back as we taxied down the aerodrome, and saw the
+mechanics melting away to their morning tea. Only one figure remained, a
+young pilot in a black and yellow fur coat, who had left his warm bed to
+wish us luck. For a moment I saw him standing there, framed in flame,
+looking after us regretfully. Then I saw him no more, and later they
+told me (but it was not true) that he had died at Ctesiphon.
+
+We rose over the tents of our camp at Aziziah, all silver and still in
+the half-light, and headed for the Turkish outposts at El Kutunieh.
+Their bivouac fires mounted straight to heaven. It was a calm and
+cloudless dawn, ideal weather for the business we had been sent out to
+do.
+
+At all costs, we had been told, the telegraphic communications west and
+north of Baghdad must be cut that day. Von der Goltz and a German
+battery of quick-firing guns were hasting down from Mosul to help their
+stricken ally, and reinforcements of the best Anatolian troops,
+magnificently equipped and organised by the Germans, were on their way
+from Gallipoli, whence they came flushed with the confidence of success.
+
+Our attack on Ctesiphon was imminent. It was a matter of moments whether
+the Turkish reinforcements would arrive in time. Delay and confusion in
+the Turkish rear would have helped us greatly, and the moral and
+material advantage of cutting communications between Nur-ed-Din, the
+vacillating Commander-in-Chief defending Baghdad, and Von der Goltz, the
+veteran of victories, was obvious and unquestionable. But could we do it
+in an old Maurice Farman biplane?
+
+Desperate needs need desperate measures. The attempt to take Baghdad was
+desperate--futile perhaps--and contrary to the advice of the great
+soldier who led the attack in the glorious but unsuccessful action of
+Ctesiphon. And so also, in a small way, ours was a desperate mission.
+Our machine could carry neither oil nor petrol enough for the journey,
+and special arrangements had to be made for carrying spare tins of
+lubricant and fuel. With these we were to refill at our first halt.
+While I was destroying the telegraph line, my pilot was to replenish the
+tanks of his machine. According to the map this should have been
+feasible, for the telegraph lines at the place we had selected for our
+demolition ran through a blank desert, two miles from the nearest track.
+That the map was wrong we did not know.
+
+All seemed quite hopeful therefore. We had got off "according to plan,"
+and the engine was running beautifully.
+
+It was stimulating to see the stir of El Kutunieh as we sailed over the
+Turks at a thousand feet. They ran to take cover from the bombs which
+had so often greeted them at sunrise; but for once we sailed placidly
+on, having other fish to fry, and left them to the pleasures of
+anticipation. Far behind us a few puffs from their ridiculous apology
+for an anti-aircraft gun blossomed like sudden flowers and then melted
+in the sunlight above the world. Below, in the desert, it was still
+dark. Men were rubbing their eyes in El Kutunieh and cursing us.
+
+But for us day had dawned. As we rose, there rose behind us a round
+cheerful sun, whose rays caught our trail and spangled it with light,
+and danced in my eyes as I looked back through the propeller, and lit up
+the celluloid floor of the nacelle as if to help me see my implements.
+That dawn was jubilant with hope--I felt inclined to dance. And I sang
+from sheer exhilaration--a sort of swan song (as I see it now) before
+captivity. The desert seemed barren no longer. Transmuted by the sunrise
+those "miles and miles of nothing at all" became a limitless expanse
+where all the kingdoms of the world were spread out before our eyes.
+Away to the east the Tigris wound like a snake among the sands; to
+westward, a huddle of houses and date-palms with an occasional gleam
+from the gold domes of Kazimain, lay the city of the Arabian Nights,
+where Haroun al Raschid once reigned, and where now there is hope his
+spirit may reign again. Baghdad nestled among its date-palms, with
+little wisps of cloud still shrouding its sleep, all unconscious of the
+great demonstration it was to give before noon to two forlorn and
+captive airmen. To the north lay the Great Desert with a hint of violet
+hills on the far horizon. To the south also lay the Great Desert, with
+no feature on its yellow face save the scar of some irrigation cut made
+in the twilight time of history.
+
+But the beauties of Nature were not for us: we were intent on the works
+of man. There was unwonted traffic across the bridge over the great Arch
+of Ctesiphon. The enemy river craft were early astir, and so were their
+antediluvian Archies. These latter troubled us no more than was their
+wont, but the activity at Qusaibah and Sulman Pak was disquieting.
+Trains of carts were moving across the river from the right to the left
+bank. Tugs, gravid with troops, were on their way from Baghdad. In
+trenches and gun emplacements feverish work was in progress. Like ants
+at a burrow, men were dragging overhead cover into place. Lines of
+fatigue parties were marching hither and thither. New support trenches
+were being dug.
+
+As always, when one saw these things, one longed for more eyes, better
+eyes, an abler pencil, to record them for our staff. An observer has
+great responsibilities at times: one cannot help remembering that a
+missed obstruction, a forgotten emplacement may mean a terrible toll of
+suffering. Our men would soon attack these trenches, relying largely on
+our photographs and information. . . . When, a week later, there rose
+above the battle the souls of all the brave men dead at Ctesiphon,
+seeing then with clearer eyes than mine, I pray they forgave our
+shortcomings and remembered we did our best.
+
+We could not circle over Ctesiphon, in spite of the interest we saw
+there, until our duty was performed, and had to fly on, leaving it to
+eastward.
+
+On the return journey, however, we promised ourselves as full an
+investigation as our petrol supply allowed, and had we returned with our
+report on what we had seen and done that day, things might have been
+very different. But what's the use of might-have-beens?
+
+After an hour's flying we sighted the telegraph line that was our
+objective, but when we approached it more closely a sad surprise awaited
+us, for instead of the blank surface which the map portrayed, we found
+that the line ran along a busy thoroughfare leading to Baghdad. Some ten
+thousand camels, it seemed to my disappointed eyes, were swaying and
+slouching towards the markets of the capital. We came low to observe the
+traffic better, and the camels craned their long necks upwards, burbling
+with surprise at this great new bird they had never seen. The ships of
+the desert, it seemed to me, disliked the ship of the air as much as we
+disapproved of them.
+
+Besides the camels, there were ammunition carts and armed soldiers along
+the road, making a landing impossible. Our demolition would only take
+three minutes under favourable conditions, but in three minutes even an
+Arab soldier can be trusted to hit an aeroplane and two airmen at
+point-blank range.
+
+So we flew westward down the road, looking for a landing ground. Baghdad
+was behind us now. On our right lay a great lake, and ahead we got an
+occasional glimpse of the Euphrates in the morning sun. At last--near a
+mound, which we afterwards heard was Nimrod's tomb--we saw that the
+telegraph line took a turn to northward, leaving the road by a mile or
+more. Here we decided to land. Nimrod's tomb was to be the tomb of our
+activities.
+
+While we were circling down I felt exactly as one feels at the start of
+a race, watching for the starting gate to rise. It was a tense but
+delightful moment.
+
+We made a perfect landing, and ran straight and evenly towards the
+telegraph posts. I had already stripped myself of my coat and all
+unnecessary gear, and wore sandshoes in case I had to climb a post to
+get at the insulators. The detonators were in my pocket, the wire
+clippers hung at my belt. I stooped down to take a necklace of
+gun-cotton from the floor of the 'bus, and as I did so, I felt a slight
+bump and a slight splintering of wood.
+
+We had stopped.
+
+I jumped out of the machine, still sure that all was well. And then----
+
+Then I saw that our left wing tip had crashed into a telegraph post.
+Even so the full extent of our disaster dawned slowly on me. I could not
+believe that we had broken something vital. Yet the pilot was quite
+sure.
+
+The leading edge of the plane was broken. Our flying days were finished.
+It had been my pilot's misfortune, far more than his fault, that we had
+crashed. The unexpected smoothness of the landing ground, and a rear
+wind that no one could have foreseen, had brought about disaster.
+Nothing could be done. I stood silent--while hope sank from its zenith,
+to the nadir of disappointment. Nothing remained--except to do our job.
+
+With light feet but heart of lead, I ran across to another telegraph
+post, leaving the pilot to ascertain whether by some miracle we might
+not be able to get our machine to safety. But even as I left him I knew
+that there was no hope; the only thing that remained was to destroy the
+line and then take our chance with the Arabs.
+
+By the time I had fixed the explosive necklace round the post, a few
+stray Arabs, who had been watching our descent, fired at us from
+horseback. I set the fuse and lit it, then strolled back to the machine,
+where the pilot confirmed my worst fears. The machine was unflyable.
+
+Presently there was a loud bang. The charge had done its work and the
+post was neatly cut in two.
+
+Horsemen were now appearing from the four quarters of the desert. On
+hearing the explosion the mounted men instantly wheeled about and
+galloped off in the opposite direction, while those on foot took cover,
+lying flat on their faces. To encourage the belief in our aggressive
+force, the pilot stood on the seat of the 'bus and treated them to
+several bursts of rapid fire.
+
+Meanwhile, I took another necklace of gun-cotton and returned to my
+demolition. This second charge I affixed to the wires and insulators of
+the fallen post, so as to render repair more difficult. While I was thus
+engaged, I noticed that spurts of sand were kicking up all about me. The
+fire had increased in accuracy and intensity. So accurate indeed had it
+become that I guessed that the Arabs (who cannot hit a haystack) had
+been reinforced by regulars. I lit the fuse and covered the hundred
+yards back to the machine in my very best time (which is about fifteen
+seconds) to get cover and companionship. A hot fire was being directed
+on to the machine now, at ranges varying from fifty to five hundred
+yards. It was not a pleasant situation, and I experienced a curious
+mixed feeling of regret and relief: regret that there was nothing more
+to do, relief that something at least had been accomplished to earn the
+long repose before us. On the nature of this repose I had never
+speculated, and even now the fate that awaited us seemed immaterial so
+long as something happened quickly. One wanted to get it over. I was
+very frightened, I suppose.
+
+Bang!
+
+The second charge had exploded, and the telegraph wires whipped back and
+festooned themselves round our machine. The insulators were dust, no
+doubt, and the damage would probably take some days to repair. So far so
+good. Our job was done in so far as it lay in our power to do it.
+
+"Do you see that fellow in blue?" said the pilot to me, pointing to a
+ferocious individual about a hundred yards away who was brandishing a
+curved cutlass. "I think it must be an officer. We had better give
+ourselves up to him when the time comes."
+
+I cordially agreed, but rather doubted that the time would ever come. It
+speaks volumes for Arab marksmanship that they missed our machine about
+as often as they hit it.
+
+I destroyed a few private papers, and then, as it was obviously useless
+to return the fire of two hundred men with a single rifle, we started up
+the engine again, more with the idea of doing something than with any
+hope of getting away.
+
+The machine, it may be mentioned, was not to be destroyed in the event
+of a breakdown such as this, because our army hoped to be in Baghdad
+within a week, and it would have been impossible for the Turks to carry
+it with them in the case of a retreat.
+
+The Arabs hesitated to advance, and still continued to pour in a hot
+fire. Feeling the situation was becoming ridiculous, I got into the
+aeroplane and determined to attempt flying it. Now I am not a pilot, and
+know little of machines. The pilot had pronounced the aeroplane to be
+unflyable, and very rightly did not accompany me.
+
+But I was pigheaded and determined "to have one more flip in the old
+'bus." After disentangling the wires that had whipped round the king
+posts, I got into the pilot's seat and taxied away down wind. Then I
+turned, managing the operation with fair success, and skimmed back
+towards the pilot with greatly increasing speed. But all my efforts did
+not succeed in making the machine lift clear of the ground. Some Arabs
+were now rushing towards the pilot, and a troop of mounted gendarmes
+were galloping in my direction. I tried to swerve to avoid these men,
+but could not make the machine answer to her controls. Then I pulled the
+stick back frantically in a last effort to rise above them. She gave a
+little hop, then floundered down in the middle of the cavalry.
+
+Somehow or other the 'bus was standing still, and I was on the ground
+beside it.
+
+Mounted gendarmes surrounded me with rifles levelled, not at me, but at
+the machine. I cocked my revolver and put it behind my back, hesitating.
+Then an old gendarme spurred his horse up to me and held out his right
+hand in the friendliest possible fashion. I grasped it in surprise, for
+the grip he gave me was a grip I knew, proving that even here in the
+desert men are sometimes brothers. Then, emptying out the cartridges
+from my revolver in case of accidents, I handed it to him. Not very
+heroic certainly--but then surrendering is a sorry business: the best
+that can be said for it is that it is sometimes common sense.
+
+At that moment the gentleman in blue, whose appearance we had previously
+discussed, suddenly appeared behind me and swinging up his scimitar with
+both hands, struck me a violent blow where neck joins shoulder. This
+blow deprived me of all feeling for a moment. On coming-to I discovered
+that my aggressor was not dressed in blue at all; he wore no stitch of
+raiment of any description, but whether he was painted with woad or only
+tanned by the sun I had no opportunity of enquiring. Whether, again, the
+kindly gendarme had turned the blow or whether the _ghazi_ had purposely
+hit me with the flat of his weapon, I never discovered; but of this much
+I am certain, that except for that kindly gendarme--to whom may Allah
+bring blessings--this story would not have been written.
+
+I made my way to the pilot as soon as I was able to do so, and found him
+bleeding profusely from a wound in the head, surrounded by a hundred
+tearing, screaming Arabs. Every minute, the number of the Arabs was
+increasing, and the gendarmes had the greatest difficulty in protecting
+us. All round us excited horsemen circled, firing _feux de joie_ and
+uttering hoarse cries of exultation. We were making slow progress
+towards the police post about a mile distant, but at times, so fiercely
+did the throng press round us, I doubted if we should ever come through.
+
+Once, yielding to popular clamour, the police stopped and parleyed with
+some Arab chiefs who had arrived upon the scene. After a heated colloquy
+of which we did not understand one word, in spite of our not unnatural
+interest, the Turkish gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and appeared to
+accede to the Arabs' demands. Several of the more ruffianly among them
+seized the pilot and pulled his flying coat over his head. The memory of
+that moment is the most unpleasant in my life, and I cannot, try as I
+will, entirely dissociate myself from the horror of what I thought would
+happen. Even now it often holds sleep at arm's length. Not the fact of
+death, but the imagined manner of it, dismayed me. I bitterly regretted
+having surrendered my revolver only to be thus tamely murdered.
+
+Meanwhile I had been also seized and borne down under a crowd of Arabs.
+We fought for some time, and I had a glimpse of the pilot, who is a very
+clever boxer, upholding British traditions with his fists. . . .
+
+Suddenly the scene changed from tragedy to farce. We were not going to
+be murdered at all, but only robbed. And the pilot had given our _ghazi_
+friend a black eye--blacker than his skin.
+
+At length I got free, minus all my possessions except my wrist watch,
+which they did not see, and saw that the pilot also had his head above
+the scrimmage, still "bloody but unbowed." The worst was over. That had
+been the climax of my capture.
+
+All that happened thereafter, until chances of escape occurred, was in a
+_diminuendo_ of emotion.
+
+All I really longed for now was for something to smoke. My cigarette
+case had gone.
+
+The gendarmes, who had stood aside through these proceedings, now
+returned and hurried us towards the police post, while most of the
+captors remained behind disputing about our loot. All this time the
+machine had been absolutely neglected, but now I saw some Arabs stalking
+cautiously up to it and discharging their firearms. Feeling the machine
+would be damaged beyond repair if they continued firing at it, and so
+rendered useless to us after our imminent capture of Baghdad, I tried to
+explain to the gendarmes that it was quite unnecessary to waste good
+lead on it, its potentiality for evil having vanished with our
+surrender. The impression I conveyed, however, was that there was a
+third officer in the machine, and a large party adjourned to
+investigate. During this diversion I tried to jump on to a white mare,
+whose owner had left her to go towards the machine, but received a
+second nasty blow on the spine for my pains. Again the kindly gendarme
+came to my rescue, seeing, I suppose, that I was looking pretty blue. He
+addressed me as "Baba," and--may Allah give him increase!--gave me a
+cigarette.
+
+At last we got to the police post, and, as we entered and passed through
+a dark stable passage, the gendarme on my left side, noticing my wrist
+watch, slyly detached it and pocketed it with a meaning smile. As the
+price of police protection I did not grudge it.
+
+Big doors clanged behind us and our captivity proper had begun: what had
+gone before had been more like a scrum at Rugger, with ourselves as the
+ball.
+
+We examined our injuries and bruises, and I tried to dress the wounds on
+the pilot's head, with little success, however, for our guardians could
+provide nothing but the most brackish water, and disinfectants were
+undreamed of. We discussed our future at some length, and agreed that
+our best plan was to be recaptured in Baghdad on the taking of that
+city. To this end we decided that it would be advisable to make the most
+of our injuries, so that when the Turkish retreat took place we would
+not be in a fit condition to accompany it. To feign sickness would not,
+indeed, be difficult. I felt that every bone in my body was broken, and
+my pilot was in an even worse condition.
+
+Meanwhile there was a great clamour and "confused noises without," which
+seemed to refer insistently and unpleasantly to us. On asking what the
+people were saying, we were informed that the Arabs wanted to take our
+heads to the Turkish Commander-in-Chief at Suleiman Pak, whereas the
+gendarmes pointed out that there would be far greater profit and
+pleasure in taking us there alive. We cordially agreed, and did not join
+the discussion, feeling it to be more academic than practical, as we
+were quite safe in the police post.
+
+We had neither hats nor overcoats, but we each still retained our
+jackets and breeches, though in a very torn condition. I was still in
+possession of my sandshoes, probably because the Arabs did not think
+them worth the taking.
+
+Considering things calmly, we felt that we were lucky. This bondage
+would not last. We would surely fly again, perhaps soon. But for a week
+or so we must accustom ourselves to new conditions. Everything was
+strange about us, and it struck me at once how close a parallel there is
+between the drama of Captivity and the drama of Life. In each case there
+is a "curtain," and in each case a man enters into a new world whose
+language and customs he does not know. Almost naked we came to our
+bondage, dumb, bloody, disconcerted by the whole business. So, perhaps,
+do infants feel at the world awaiting their ken: it is taken for
+granted that they enjoy life, and so also our captors were convinced
+that we should feel delighted at our situation.
+
+"We saved you from the Arabs," we understood them to say, "and now you
+are safe until the war is over. You need do no more work."
+
+Such at any rate was my estimate of what they said, but being in an
+unknown tongue, it was only necessary to nod in answer.
+
+Tea was brought to us, sweet, weak tea in little glasses, and we made
+appreciative noises. Then the kindly gendarme--may he be rewarded in
+both worlds--brought each of us some cigarettes, in return for which we
+gave him our brightest smiles, having nothing else to give.
+
+But one could not smile for long in that little room, thinking of the
+sun and air outside and the old 'bus lying wrecked in the desert. We
+would have been flying back now; we would have reconnoitred the Turkish
+lines; we would have been back by nine o'clock to breakfast, bath, and
+glory. . . .
+
+"It's the thirteenth of the month," groaned the pilot, whose thoughts
+were similar to mine.
+
+For a long time I sulked in silence, while the pilot, with better
+manners or more vitality than I, engaged the gendarmes in light
+conversation, conducted chiefly by gesture. About an hour later (a "day"
+of the Creation, it seemed to me--and it was indeed a formative time,
+when the mind, so long accustomed to range free, seeks to adjust its
+processes to captivity and adapt itself to new conditions of time and
+space) there occurred at last a diversion to interrupt my gloom.
+
+The Turkish District Governor arrived with two carriages to take us to
+Baghdad. He spoke English and was agreeable in a mild sort of way,
+except for his unfortunate habit of asking questions which we could not
+answer. He told us that news of our descent and capture had been sent to
+Baghdad by gallopers (not by telegram, I noted parenthetically) and that
+the population was awaiting our arrival. I said that I hoped the
+population would not be disappointed, and he assured us with a
+significant smile that they certainly would not.
+
+"Whatever happens," he was kind enough to add, "I will be responsible
+for your lives myself."
+
+His meaning became apparent a little later, when we approached the
+suburbs of Baghdad and found an ugly crowd awaiting our arrival, armed
+with sticks and stones. When we reached the city itself the streets were
+lined as if for a royal procession. Shops had put up their shutters, the
+markets were closed, the streets were thronged, and every window held
+its quota of heads. The word had gone out that there was to be a
+demonstration, and the hysteria which lurks in every city in a time of
+crisis found its fullest scope. Our downfall was taken as an omen of
+British defeat, and the inhabitants of Baghdad held high holiday at the
+sight of captive British airmen.
+
+Elderly merchants wagged their white beards and cursed us as we passed;
+children danced with rage, and threw mud; lines of Turkish women pulled
+back their veils in scorn, and putting out their tongues at us cried
+"La, la, la," in a curious note of derision; boys brandished knives;
+babies shook their little fists. No hated Tarquins could have had a more
+hostile demonstration. We were both spat upon. A man with a heavy cudgel
+aimed a blow at my pilot which narrowly missed him, another with a long
+dagger stabbed through the back of the carriage and was dragged away
+with difficulty: I can still see his snarling face and _hashish_-haunted
+eyes. Our escort could hardly force a way for our carriage through the
+narrow streets. All this time we sat trying to look dignified and
+smoking constant cigarettes. . . . State arrival of British prisoners in
+Baghdad--what a scene it would have been for the cinematograph!
+
+Arrived at the river, a space was cleared round us, and we were embarked
+with a great deal of fuss in a boat to take us across to the Governor's
+palace. Before leaving, I said goodbye to the kindly gendarme who had
+helped a brother in distress, and once more now, across the wasted years
+of captivity and the turmoil of my life to-day, I grasp his hand in
+gratitude.
+
+Our first interview in Baghdad was with a journalist. He was very polite
+and anxious for our impressions, but I told him that the Arabs had given
+us quite enough impressions for the day, and that words could not
+adequately express what we felt at our arrival in Baghdad. We chiefly
+wanted a wash.
+
+That afternoon we were taken to hospital, and to our surprise (for,
+being new to the conditions of captivity, we were still susceptible to
+surprise) we found that we were very well treated there. Two sentries,
+however, stood at our open door day and night to watch our every
+movement. When the Governor of Baghdad came to see us that evening
+(thoughtfully bringing with him a bottle of whisky) I politely told him
+(in French, a language he spoke fluently) that so much consideration had
+been shown to us that I hoped he would not mind my asking whether we
+could not have a little more privacy. The continual presence of the
+sentries was a little irksome. He understood my point perfectly--much
+too perfectly. Taking me to the window, he spoke smoothly, as follows:
+
+"I am so sorry the sentries disturb you, but I feel responsible for your
+safety, and should you by any chance fall out of that window--it is not
+so very far from the ground, you see--you might get into bad hands. I
+assure you that Baghdad is full of wicked men."
+
+The Governor was too clever. There was no chance with him of securing
+more favourable conditions for escape, so we turned to the discussion of
+the whisky bottle. As in all else he did, he had an object, I soon
+discovered, in bringing this forbidden fluid. His purpose, of course,
+was to make us talk, and talk we did, under its generous and
+unaccustomed influence, for it had been some time since we had seen
+spirits in our own mess at Azizieh. I would much like to see the report
+that the Turkish Intelligence Staff made of that wonderful conversation.
+Several officers had dropped in--casually--to join in the talk, and we
+told them we had lost our way; then our engine had stopped, and we
+landed as near to some village as we could. We knew nothing of an attack
+on Baghdad, we did not know General Townshend, but had certainly heard
+of him. We had heard a rumour that he had defeated the Turks at Es-sinn
+a month previously, and would like to know the truth of the matter.
+Eventually the bottle was exhausted, and so were our imaginations. We
+parted with the utmost cordiality and a firm intention of seeing as
+little of each other as possible in the future.
+
+In the street below our window were some large earthenware jars, like
+those in which the Forty Thieves had hidden aforetime in this very city,
+and for about a day we considered the story of Aladdin, in regard to the
+possibility of escape by getting into these jars; but just as we had
+made our plans the jars were removed, being taken no doubt to the
+support trenches, which were found by our troops excellently provided
+with water.
+
+As the day grew near for our attack, we saw many thousand Arabs being
+marched down to Ctesiphon. It was no conquering army this, no freemen
+going to defend their native land, but miserable bands of slaves being
+sent into subjection. Down to the river bank, where they were embarked
+on lighters, they were followed by their weeping relatives. There was no
+pretence at heroism. They would have escaped if they could, but the
+Turks had taken care of that. They were tied together by fours, their
+right hand being lashed to a wooden yoke, while their left was employed
+in carrying a rifle. These unfortunate creatures were taken to a spot
+near the trenches and were then transferred, still securely tied
+together, to the worst dug and most-exposed part of the line. Machine
+guns were then posted behind them to block all possible lines of
+retreat. In addition to minor discomforts such as bearing the brunt of
+our attack, the Arabs, so I was told, were frequently unprovided with
+provisions and water, so it is small wonder that their demeanour did not
+show the fire of battle. But _Kannonen-futter_ was required for
+Ctesiphon, and down the river this pageant of dejected pacifists had to
+go.
+
+After the attack had begun, shiploads of these same men returned
+wounded, and arrived in our hospital in an indescribably pitiable
+condition. There were no stretchers, and the wounded were left to shift
+for themselves, relying on charity and the providence of Allah. The
+blind led the blind, the halt helped the lame.
+
+Later, wounded Anatolian soldiers began also to arrive, and their plight
+was no less wretched than that of the Arabs, though their behaviour was
+incomparably better. One could not help admiring their stoicism in the
+face of terrible and often unnecessary suffering. The utter lack of
+system in dealing with casualties was hardly more remarkable than the
+fortitude of the casualties themselves. When a proclamation was read to
+the sufferers in our hospital, announcing the success of the Turkish
+arms at Ctesiphon, the wounded seemed to forget their pain and the dying
+acquired a new lease of life. I actually saw a man with a mortal wound
+in the head, who a few minutes previously had been choking and literally
+at his last gasp, rally all his forces to utter thanks to God, and then
+die.
+
+Never for a moment had we thought that the attack on Ctesiphon could
+fail. The odds, we knew, were heavily against us, but we firmly believed
+that General Townshend would achieve the impossible. That he did not do
+so was not his fault nor the fault of the gallant men he led. But this
+is a record of my personal experiences only, and I will spare the reader
+all the long reflections and alternations of anxiety and hope which held
+our thoughts while the guns boomed down the Tigris and the fate of
+Baghdad--and our fate--was poised in the balance.
+
+At six o'clock one morning we were suddenly awakened and told that we
+must leave for Mosul immediately. By every possible means in our power
+we delayed the start, thinking our troops might come at any moment. But
+the Turkish sergeant who commanded our escort had definite orders that
+we were to be out of the city by nine o'clock. We drove in a carriage
+through mean streets, attracting no attention, for now the Baghdadis
+realised their danger. Before leaving, our sergeant paid a visit to his
+house, in order to collect his kit, leaving us at the door, guarded by
+four soldiers. His sisters came down to see him off and (being of
+progressive tendencies, I suppose) they were not veiled. It were crime
+indeed to have hidden such lustrous eyes and skin so fair.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  A SHADOWLAND OF ARABESQUES
+
+
+Some breath of reality, some call from the outer world of freedom came
+to us from the presence of these girls. They seemed the first real
+people I had seen in my captivity, femininity incarnate, human beings in
+a shadow-land of arabesques. They were happy and healthy and somehow
+outside the insanities of our world. For a moment they gazed at us in
+awe, and for another moment in complete sympathy: then they retired with
+little squeaks of laughter and busied themselves with their brother's
+baggage.
+
+When our preparations were complete and we set off on our long journey,
+they stood for a space at the casement window and waved us goodbye,
+looking quite charming. I vowed that if Fate by a happy chance were to
+lead us back to Baghdad with rôles reversed, so that they, not we, were
+captives in the midst of foes, my first care would be to repay their
+kindly, though unspoken, sympathy. They were too human for the
+futilities of war, too amiable to have a hand in Armageddon.
+
+Only prisoners, I think, see the full absurdity of war. Only prisoners,
+to begin with, fully realise the gift of life. And only prisoners see
+war without its glamour, and realise completely the suffering behind
+the lines: the maimed, the blind, the women who weep. Only by a few of
+us in happy England has the full tragedy of war been realised. Mere
+words will never record it, but prisoners know "the heartbreak in the
+heart of things." To us who have been behind the scenes, far from the
+shouting and the tumult and the captains and the kings, the wretchedness
+of it all remains indelible. Nothing can make us forget the broken men
+and women, whose woes will haunt our times.
+
+But I was on the threshold of my experiences then, and the maidens of
+Baghdad soon passed from memory, I fear--vanishing like the mists of
+morning that hung over the river-bank at the outset of our journey.
+
+We travelled in that marvellous conveyance, the _araba_. To generalise
+from types is dangerous, but the _araba_ is certainly typical of Turkey.
+Its discomfort is as amazing as its endurance. It is a rickety cart with
+a mattress to sit on. A pole (frequently held together by string) to
+which two ponies are harnessed (frequently again with string) supplies
+the motive power, which is restrained by reins mended with string, or
+encouraged by a whip made of string. The contrivance is surmounted by a
+patchwork hood tied down with string. A few buckets and hay nets are
+strung between its crazy wheels. Such is the _araba_. How it holds
+together is a mystery as inscrutable as the East itself. If all the
+vitality expended in Turkey on starting upon a journey and continuing
+upon it were turned to other purposes, the land might flourish. But the
+philosophy which makes the _araba_ possible makes other activities
+impossible.
+
+A full two hours before the start, when the world is still blue with
+cold, travellers are summoned to leave their rest. Then the drivers
+begin to feed their ponies. When this is done they feed themselves.
+Then, leisurely, they load the baggage. Finally, when all seems ready,
+it occurs to somebody that it is impossible to leave before the cavalry
+escort is in saddle. "Ahmed Effendi" is called for. Everyone shouts for
+"Ahmed Effendi," who is sleeping soundly, like a sensible man. He wakes,
+and, to create a diversion perhaps, accuses a driver of stealing his
+chicken. The driver replies in suitable language. Meanwhile time passes.
+The disc of the sun cuts the horizon line of the desert, disclosing us
+all standing chill and cramped and bored and still unready. A pony has
+lain down in his harness, in an access of boredom, no doubt. A goat has
+stolen part of my scanty bread ration and is now browsing peacefully in
+the middle distance. Far away a cur is barking at the jackals. Some of
+our escort have retired to pray, others are still wrangling. Two or
+three are engaged in kicking the bored pony.
+
+After recovering from the goat my half-loaf, which is so much better
+than no bread in the desert, I watch with amazement the Turkish
+treatment of the pony. A skewer is produced and rammed into the
+unfortunate animal's left nostril. So barbarous does this seem that I am
+on the point of protesting, when suddenly the animal struggles to its
+feet, and stands shivering and wide-eyed and apparently well again.
+After the wound has been sponged and the pony given a few dates, it
+seems equal to fresh endeavour. The blood-letting has cleared its
+brain--and no wonder, poor beast.
+
+At length all seems ready. We climb into the _araba_. But we are not off
+yet. We sit for another hour while the drivers refresh themselves with a
+second breakfast. A rhyme keeps running through my frozen brain:
+
+  "Slow pass the hours--ah, passing slow--
+   My doom is worse than anything
+   Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe."
+
+But I did not realise then how lucky we were to be travelling by
+carriages at all. Nor did I realise what an honour it was to be
+presented to the local governors through whose districts we passed. It
+was only late in captivity, when merged in an undistinguished band of
+prisoners, that I understood the pomp and circumstance of our early
+days. Late in 1915 a prisoner was still a new sort of animal to the
+Turks. They were curious about us, and to some extent the curiosity was
+mutual. One kept comparing them with the descriptions in "Eöthen."
+
+Proceedings generally opened in a long low room. The local magnate sat
+at a desk, on which were set a saucer containing an inky sponge, a dish
+of sand, and some reed-pens. A scribe stood beside the _kaimakam_ and
+handed him documents, which he scrutinised as if they were works of art,
+holding them delicately in his left hand as a connoisseur might consider
+his porcelain. Then with a reed-pen he would scratch the document, still
+holding it in the palm of his hand, and after sprinkling it carefully
+with sand would return it to the scribe. All this was incidental to his
+conversation with us or with other members of the audience. There were
+never less than ten people in any of the rooms in which we were
+interviewed, and as they all made fragmentary remarks, one quoting a
+text from the Koran, another a French _bon mot_, and a third introducing
+some question of local politics, and as the governor asked us questions
+and signed papers and kept up a running commentary with his friends, one
+felt exactly like Alice at the Hatter's tea party.
+
+"A Turk does not listen to what you are saying," I have since been told,
+"he merely watches your expression." That this is true of the uneducated
+I have no doubt, and if correct about the educated Turk I daresay it is
+not to his discredit. Demeanour in Oriental countries counts for much.
+
+But at Samarra our demeanour was sorely tried. We had been travelling
+about three days in the desert, when we arrived at this desolate and
+dishevelled spot. I longed to lie down and shut my eyes, and forget
+about captivity for a bit, but no!--there came a summons to attend the
+ghastly social function I had already learned to loathe.
+
+The Governor of that place was a _tout ŕ fait civilisé_ Young Turk,
+sedentary, Semitic, and very disagreeable.
+
+"Is it true that you dropped bombs on the Mosque at Baghdad?" he asked.
+
+And--
+
+"Do you know that the population of Baghdad nearly killed you?"
+
+And--
+
+"Do you know that in another month the English will be driven into the
+Persian Gulf?" . . . and so on.
+
+We denied these soft impeachments, and then his method became more
+direct.
+
+"Some of your friends have been killed and captured," he said--"the
+commandant of your flying corps, for instance."
+
+Seeing us incredulous, he accurately described the Major's appearance.
+
+"And there is someone else," the _kaimakam_ continued in slow tones that
+iced my blood. "Someone who may be a friend of yours. A young pilot in a
+fur coat."
+
+My heart stood still.
+
+"He was killed by an Arab," the _kaimakam_ added. . . .
+
+Here I will skip a page or two of mental history. The defeat of my
+country, the death of my friend, the crumbling of my hopes: little
+indeed was left. . . . . .
+
+Let five dots supply the ugly blank. There is sorrow and failure enough
+in the world without speculating on tragedies that never happened.
+Baghdad was taken later, my friend proved to be captured, not killed,
+and I write this by Thames-side, not the Tigris.
+
+The inhabitants of Samarra are, I believe, the most ill-balanced people
+in the world. This trait is well known to travellers, and we found it no
+traveller's tale. On first arriving at Samarra, we halted in the
+rest-house on the right bank of the river, and were enjoying our frugal
+meal of bread and dates when a sergeant came to us from the Governor
+with orders that we were to be instantly conveyed to his residence,
+which is situated in the town across the river. We demurred, and our own
+sergeant protested, but the Governor's emissary had definite orders, and
+we were hurried down in the twilight. Here we found that there was no
+boat to take us across. The Samarra sergeant shouted to a boatful of
+Arabs, floating down the river, but they would not stop. Louder and
+louder he shouted, till his voice cracked in a scream. Growing frantic
+with rage, he fired his revolver at the Arabs. Of course he missed them,
+but the bullets, ricochetting in the water, probably found a billet in
+the town beyond. The Arab occupants merely laughed in their beards. We
+also laughed. Then the sergeant declared that we would have to swim, and
+we urged him in pantomime to show the way.
+
+Eventually he spied a horse-barge down river, with a naked boy playing
+beside it. Reloading his revolver, a few shots in his direction
+attracted the lad's attention. Then an old man came out of a hut by some
+melon beds, to see who was firing at his son.
+
+Another shot or two and the old man and the boy were prevailed upon to
+take us across. We had secured our transport at last, and the whole
+transaction seemed (in Samarra) as simple as hailing a taxi.
+
+I bought a melon from the boy, and he snatched my money contemptuously.
+To take things without violence is a sign of weakness in Samarra. I
+noticed afterwards that all the boys and girls in this happy spot were
+fighting each other or engaged in killing something. And their elders
+keep something of the feckless violence of youth. I do not think that
+there are any good Samarratans.
+
+After the interview with the Governor already mentioned, which ended by
+a refusal on our part to speak with him further, we were sent to pass
+the night in a filthy hovel, whose only furniture consisted of a bench
+and a chair. Our sergeant was sitting on this chair when an officer
+rushed in and jerked it from under him, leaving him on the floor. As a
+conjuring trick it was neat, but as manners, deplorable. We were glad to
+get away from the place.
+
+Very few incidents came to diversify the monotony of our desert travel.
+One day, however, we met some Turkish cavalry going down to the siege of
+Kut. They were a fine body of troops, a little under-mounted perhaps,
+but thoroughly business-like. Their officers were most chivalrous
+cavaliers. Here in the desert, where luxuries were not to be had for
+money or for murder, they frequently gave us a handful of cigarettes, or
+a parcel of raisins, or else halted their squadron and asked us to share
+their meal. With these men one felt at ease. They were soldiers like
+ourselves. They did not ask awkward questions, and were told no lies. I
+remember especially one afternoon in the Marble Hills when we sat in a
+ring drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, with the panorama of the
+desert spread out before us, from the southward plains of Arabia to the
+hills of the devil-worshippers, misty and mysterious, in the north. We
+talked about horses all the time. A modern Isaiah delivered himself of
+the following sentiment, in which I heartily concur:
+
+"Where there is no racing the people perish."
+
+The first-line Turk has many fine qualities, of which generosity and
+gallantry are not the least. Something in Anglo-Saxon blood is in
+sympathy with the adventure-loving, flower-loving Turk. But, alas! there
+is another type of Ottoman, with the taint of Tamerlane. "When he is
+good he is very very good, but when he is bad he is horrid."
+
+In the latter category I must regretfully place the sergeant who
+commanded our escort. He came of decent stock (to judge by his charming
+sisters, and his own appearance indeed) but his mind was all mud and
+blood. He had been Hunified. Turkey would always be fighting, he said.
+The English were almost defeated. The Armenians were almost
+exterminated. But the Greeks remained to be dealt with, and the cursed
+Arabs. Finally the Germans themselves. In an apotheosis of Prussianism
+Turkey was to turn on her Allies and drive them out. Such was his creed.
+But a glow of courage lit the dark places of his mind. He loved fighting
+for the sheer fun of the thing. A few days beyond Samarra we were
+attacked by some wandering Arabs, who swept down on us in a crescent.
+Our guards panicked, but he stood his ground, and, seizing a rifle,
+dispersed the enemy by some well-directed shots. Whether we were near
+deliverance or death on that occasion I do not know, but that the panic
+amongst our escort was not wholly unreasonable was evinced by the fact
+that only a few hours earlier we had passed the headless trunk of a
+gendarme, strapped upon a donkey. He had been decapitated as a warning
+to the Samarratans that two can play at the game of savagery.
+
+The sight of the corpse had unnerved our guard, and as for myself, I did
+not know whether to be glad or sorry when the Arabs attacked us. To be
+taken by them meant either going back to the English or to the dust from
+which we came. The alternative was too heroic to be agreeable.
+Contrariwise, I was much disappointed when our sergeant finally drove
+them off. That evening, as if to point the moral, we found the body of
+another gendarme, also murdered, lying on a dung-heap outside the
+rest-house. This was at Shergat, the former capital of the Assyrians,
+and now a squalid village, where, however, the widows of Ashur were
+still "loud in their wail."
+
+Here we dined with the fattest man I have ever seen. He was really a pig
+personified, but as we both gobbled out of the same dish and ate the
+same salt, I will not further enlarge on his appearance.
+
+In the upper reaches of the Tigris there are wild geese so tame that
+they come waddling up to inspect the rare travellers through their land.
+I thought it might be possible to catch one of these animals on foot.
+Coquettishly enough they kept a certain distance. "We don't mind your
+looking at us," they seemed to say, "but we _do_ object to being pawed
+about." With the coming of the railway I am afraid a gun will destroy
+their belief in human kind.
+
+The geese appeared to enjoy the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, which
+prevails in these regions. The whole country is rich in natural oils and
+bitumen. One day it will make somebody's fortune, no doubt, and then the
+geese will waddle away from perspiring prospectors. . . .
+
+Before we arrived at Mosul we stopped for a bath at the hot springs of
+Hammam-Ali, where we met (in the water) a patriarch with a white beard,
+who confidently assured us that he was a hundred years old and would
+continue to live for another hundred, such were the beneficent
+properties of the water. Before his days are numbered he may live to see
+a Hydro at Hammam-Ali--poor old patriarch. He told us a lot about Jonah
+(whose tomb is at Nineveh, just opposite Mosul, on the other side of the
+river), and I am not sure that he did not claim acquaintance with that
+patriarch. He was quite one of the family.
+
+Mosul, he told us, was a heaven on earth, a land flowing with milk and
+honey, where we should ride all day on the best horses of Arabia, and
+feast all night in gardens such as the blessed _houris_ might adorn.
+
+It was with a certain elation, therefore, that I saw the distant
+prospect of Mosul next morning, set in its surrounding hills. A fair
+city it seemed, white and cool, with orange groves down to the river and
+many date-trees. But a closer acquaintance brought cruel disappointment,
+as generally happens in the East. The blight of the Ottoman was
+everywhere; there was dirt, decrepitude, and decay in every corner.
+Children with eye-disease, and adults with leprosies more terrible than
+Naaman's jostled each other in the mean streets. Whole quarters of the
+city had given up the ghost, and become refuse heaps, where curs grouted
+amongst offal. Mosul, like our escort-sergeant's mind, seemed a muddle
+of mud and blood.
+
+With sinking hearts we drove to the barracks, and were shown into a
+dark, gloomy office, where our names were taken. Thence we were led to a
+still murkier and more mouldering room, inhabited--nay, infested--by
+some ten Arabs. Through this we passed into a cell with windows boarded
+up, which was, if possible even damper, darker, and more dismal than
+anything we had yet seen. After the sunlight and great winds of the
+desert we stood bewildered. Death seemed in the air.
+
+Then out of the gloom there rose two figures. They were British
+officers, who had been captured about a month previously. So changed and
+wasted were they that even after we had removed the boards from the
+little window we could hardly recognise them. One of these officers was
+so ill with dysentery that he could hardly move, the other had high
+fever.
+
+Our arrival, with news from the outer world, bad though it was,
+naturally cheered them considerably, for nothing could be worse than
+their present plight.
+
+The ensuing days called for a great moral effort on our part. It was
+absolutely imperative to laugh, otherwise our surroundings would have
+closed in on us. . . . We cut up lids of cigarette boxes for playing
+cards. We inked out a chessboard on a plank. We held a spiritualistic
+séance with a soup-bowl, there being no table available to turn. We told
+interminable stories. We composed monstrous limericks; and we sang in
+rivalry with the Arab guard outside, who made day hideous with their
+melody and murdered sleep by snoring.
+
+But when there is little to eat and nothing to do, time drags heavily.
+Two cells with low ceilings that leaked were allotted to the four of us.
+In these we lived and ate and slept, except for fortnightly excursions
+to the baths. We were allowed no communication with the men, who lived
+in a dungeon below. Their fate was a sealed book to us. We had nothing
+to read. Under these conditions one begins to fear one's brain,
+especially at night. It was then that it began to run like a mechanical
+toy. Like a clockwork mouse, it scampered aimlessly amongst the dust of
+memory, then suddenly became inert, with the works run down. I grew
+terrified of thinking, especially of thinking about my friend in the fur
+coat.
+
+The night hours are the worst in captivity. One lies on the floor,
+waiting for sleep to come, but instead of blessed sleep, "beloved from
+pole to pole," thoughts come crowding thick and fast on consciousness,
+thoughts like clouds that lower over the quiescent body. Each second
+then seems of inconceivable duration. But there is no escape from Time.
+
+During the day, however, things were more bearable, and occasional
+gleams of humour enlivened the laggard moments.
+
+Among our guard there were several sentries who (I thought) might
+conceivably help us to escape. One dark night, one of these men
+whispered the one word "Jesus," and made the sign of the Cross, as I
+passed him. After this introduction I naturally hoped that he might be
+of use. He was a fine figure of a man, with a proud poise of head, and
+aquiline nose, as if some Assyrian god had been his ancestor. I was
+gazing at him in admiration the next day, and gauging his possibilities
+through my single eye-glass, when a curious thing happened.
+
+Our eyes met. He seemed mesmerised by my monocle. For a long time we
+stared at each other in silence, then, thinking the sergeant of the
+guard would notice our behaviour, I discreetly dropped my eye-glass and
+looked the other way. The sentry's mouth quivered as if I had made a
+joke, but instead of smiling, he burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
+The sergeant of the guard (a swart, sturdy little Turk) rushed out to
+see what had happened. There was the big sentry, wailing, and actually
+gnashing his white teeth. I stood awkwardly, looking as innocent as I
+felt. The sergeant bristled like a terrier, pulled the sentry's poor
+nose, and boxed his beautiful ears, while the victim continued to
+blubber and look piteously in my direction.
+
+But I could not help him at all. I had not the slightest idea what was
+the matter, nor do I know now. Hysteria, I suppose.
+
+Eventually that great solvent of perplexity, nicotine, came to relieve
+the awkward situation. First the sergeant accepted a cigarette, then,
+more diffidently, the sentry. Later I put in my eye-glass again, and
+convinced them, I think, that its use did not involve the weaving of any
+unholy spell.
+
+This eye-glass, by the way, survived all the fortunes of captivity.
+Through it I surveyed the moon-lit plains beyond the Tigris when I
+planned escape in Mosul, as shall be told in the next chapter. Later it
+scanned the desert's dusty face for any hope of release. At
+Afion-kara-hissar it helped me search for a pathway through our guards.
+At Constantinople it was still my friend. Through it, a month before
+escape, I looked at the slip of new moon that swung over San Sophia on
+the last day of Ramazan, wondering where the next moon would find me.
+And when the next moon came, I watched the sentries by its aid, on the
+night of our first escape. And it was in my eye when I slipped down the
+rope to freedom.
+
+But this chapter is getting "gaga." It has a happy ending, however.
+
+One evening when the
+
+  ". . . little patch of blue,
+   That prisoners call the sky"
+
+had turned to sulky mauve, and the air was heavy with storm, and our
+fellow-prisoners were depressed, and the Arab guard was bellowing songs
+outside, and we were peeling potatoes for our dinner by the flicker of
+lamp-light, and life seemed drab beyond description, there came great
+news to us. Two other officers had arrived.
+
+Next moment they peered into our den, even as we had done. And they were
+angry, amazed, unshaven, bronzed by the desert air, even as we had been.
+There in the doorway, ruddy and fair and truculent like some Viking out
+of time and place, stood the young pilot I had last seen at Aziziah. He
+was alive, my friend in the fur coat.
+
+The desert had delivered up its dead!
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THE TERRIBLE TURK
+
+
+One draws a long breath thinking of those days of Mosul. But bad as our
+case was, it was as nothing compared with that of the men.
+
+Some two hundred of them lived in a cellar below our quarters, through
+scenes of misery, and in an atmosphere of death which no one can
+conceive who does not know the methods of the Turk. Even to me, as I
+write in England, that Mosul prison begins to seem inconceivable.
+Huddled together on the damp flag-stones of the cellar, our men died at
+the rate of four or five a week. Although the majority were suffering
+from dysentery they not only could not secure medical attention, but
+were not even allowed out of their cells for any purpose whatever. Their
+pitiable state can be better imagined than described. Many went mad
+under our eyes. Deprived of food, light, exercise, and sometimes even
+drinking water, the condition of our sick and starving men was literally
+too terrible for words.
+
+It is useless, however, to pile horror on horror. Sixty per cent. of
+these men are dead, and this fact speaks for itself. No re-statement
+can strengthen, and no excuse can palliate, the case against the Turks.
+Our men in this particular instance were killed by the cynical brutality
+of Abdul Ghani Bey, the commandant of Mosul, and his acquiescent staff.
+
+There is an idea that "the Turks treated their own soldiers no better
+than our prisoners"; but this is a fallacy--at any rate with regard to
+hell-hounds such as Abdul Ghani Bey. He took an especial pleasure in
+inflicting the torments of thirst, hunger, and dirt upon the miserable
+beings under his care. Animals, in another country, would have been kept
+cleaner and better fed.
+
+Never shall I forget the arrival in January 1915 of a party of English
+prisoners from Baghdad. About two hundred and fifty men, who had been
+captured on barges just before the siege of Kut, had been taken first to
+Baghdad and thence by forced marches to Kirkuk, a mountain town on the
+borders of the Turko-Persian frontier. Why they were ever sent to Kirkuk
+I do not know, unless indeed it was thought that the sight of prisoners
+suitably starved would re-assure the population regarding the qualities
+of the redoubtable English soldier. After being exhibited to the
+population of Kirkuk our men continued their journey, through the bitter
+cold of the mountains, barefoot and in rags, arriving at last at Mosul
+shortly after the New Year. Only eighty men then remained out of the
+original two hundred and fifty, but although their numbers had dwindled
+their courage had not diminished.
+
+First there marched into our barrack square some sixty of our soldiers
+in column of route. They were erect and correct as if they were marching
+to a king's parade. Surely so strange a column will never be seen again.
+All were sick, and the most were sick to death. Some were barefoot, some
+had marched two hundred miles in carpet slippers, some were in
+shirt-sleeves, and all were in rags; one man only wore a great-coat, and
+he possessed no stitch of clothing beneath it. But through all adversity
+they held their heads high among the heathen, and carried themselves
+with the courage of a day "that knows not death." Silently they filed
+into the already crowded cellar, out of our sight, and many never issued
+again into the light of the sun.
+
+After these sixty men had disappeared the stragglers began to stagger
+in. One man, delirious, led a donkey on which the dead body of his
+friend was tied face downwards. After unstrapping the corpse he fell in
+a heap beside it. Dysentery cases wandered in and collapsed in groups on
+the parade ground. An Indian soldier, who had contracted lockjaw, kept
+making piteous signs to his mouth, and looking up to the verandah, where
+we stood surrounded by guards. But no one came to relieve those
+sufferers, dying by inches under our eyes.
+
+That night we managed, by bribing the guards, to have smuggled upstairs
+to us at tea-time two non-commissioned officers from among the new
+arrivals. Needless to say, we spent all our money (which was little
+enough in all conscience) in providing as good a fare as possible, and
+our famished guests devoured the honey and clotted cream we had to
+offer. Then one of them suddenly fainted. When he had somewhat recovered
+he had to be secretly conveyed below, and that was the end of the
+party--the saddest at which I have ever assisted. The officer who
+carried the sick man down spent several hours afterwards in removing
+vermin from his own clothes, for lice leave the moribund, and this poor
+boy died within a few days.
+
+Sometimes, when our pay was given us, or there occurred an opportunity
+to bribe our guard, it was our heart-breaking duty to decide which of
+the men we should attempt to save, by smuggling money to them out of the
+slender funds at our disposal, and which of their number, from cruel
+necessity, were too near their end to warrant an attempt to save.
+
+Something of the iron of Cromwell enters one's mind as one writes of
+these things. If we forget our dead, the East will not forget our shame.
+Sentiment must not interfere with justice. Abdul Ghani Bey, who shed our
+prisoners' blood, must pay the penalty. He is the embodiment of a
+certain type--perhaps not a very common type--of Turk, but common or
+not, he is one of the men responsible for the terrible death-rate among
+our soldiers. A short description of him, therefore, will not be out of
+place.
+
+He was a small man, this tiny Tamerlane, with a limp, and a scowl, and
+bandy legs. His sombre, wizened face seemed to light with pleasure at
+scenes of cruelty and despair. He insulted the old, and struck the weak,
+and delighted in the tears of women and the cries of children. This is
+not hyperbole. I have seen him stump through a crowd of Armenian widows
+and their offspring, and after striking some with his whip, he pushed
+down a woman into the gutter who held a baby at her breast. I have seen
+him pass down the ranks of Arab deserters, lashing one in the face,
+kicking another, and knocking down a third. I have seen him wipe his
+boots on the beard of an old Arab he had felled, and spur him in the
+face. I hope he has already been hanged, because only the hangman's cord
+could remove his atavistic cruelty.
+
+His subordinates went in deadly fear of him, and while it was extremely
+difficult to help our men, it was practically impossible to help
+ourselves at all in the matter of escape. Yet escape was doubly urgent
+now, to bring news of our condition to the outer world.
+
+After much thought I decided that a certain wall-eyed interpreter who
+came occasionally to buy us food was the most promising person to
+approach. My friend and I laid our plans carefully. After a judicious
+tip, and some hints as to our great importance in our own country, we
+evinced a desire to have private lessons with him in Arabic, enlarging
+at the same time upon the great career that a person like himself might
+have had, had he been serving the English and not the Turks. Gradually
+we led round to the subject of escape. At first we talked generalities
+in whispers, and he was distinctly shy of doing anything of which the
+dear commandant would not approve; but eventually, softly and
+distinctly, and with a confidence that I did not feel, I made a
+momentous proposal to him, nothing less than that he could help us to
+escape. He winced as if my remark was hardly proper, and fixed me with a
+single, thunder-struck eye. Then he quavered:
+
+"This is very sudden!"
+
+We could not help laughing.
+
+"This is no jesting matter," he said. "I will be killed if I am caught."
+
+"But you won't get caught. With the best horses in Arabia and a guide
+like you. . . ."
+
+"Hush, hush! I must think it over."
+
+For several days he preserved a tantalising silence, alternately raising
+our hopes by a wink from his wonderful eye, and then dashing them to the
+ground by a blank stare.
+
+We lived in a torment of hope deferred.
+
+But time passed more easily now. The nights took on a new complexion,
+flushed by the hope of freedom. From our little window I could see
+across a courtyard to a patch of river. Beyond it, immense and magical
+under the starlight, were the ruins of former civilisation--the mounds
+of Nineveh, the tomb of Jonah, and the rolling downs that lead to the
+mountains of Kurdistan. To those mountains my fancy went. If sleep did
+not come, then there were enthralling adventures to be lived in those
+mountains, adventures of the texture of dreams, yet tinged with a
+certain prospective of reality. . . . We had bought revolvers, our
+horses were ready, we had bribed our guard. We rode far and fast, with
+our wall-eyed friend as guide. By evening we were in a great
+forest. . . .
+
+But reality proved a poor attendant on romance. A sordid question of
+money was our stumbling-block, and a high enterprise was crippled--not
+for the first or last time--by want of cash. We had already given the
+interpreter five pounds (which represented so much bread taken out of
+our mouths), but now he stated that further funds were indispensable to
+arrange preliminaries. This seemed reasonable, for arms and horses could
+not be secured on credit in Mosul. Unfortunately, however, funds were
+not available. We could not, in decency, borrow from other prisoners to
+help us in our escape. At this juncture our guide, philosopher, and
+friend lost--or embezzled--a five-pound note that had been entrusted to
+him by another prisoner to buy us food. Whether he lost it carelessly or
+criminally I am not prepared to state, but the fact remains he lost it.
+Our fellow-prisoner very naturally complained to the Turks, as the
+absence of this five pounds meant we could buy no food for a week.
+
+The Turks arrested the interpreter. He grew frightened, invented a story
+about the complainant having asked him to help in an escape, then
+recanted, vacillated, contradicted himself, and got himself bastinadoed
+for his pains.
+
+The bastinado, I may as well here explain, is administered as follows:
+the feet of the victim are bared, and his ankles are strapped to a pole.
+The pole is now raised by two men to the height of their shoulders. A
+third man takes a thick stick about the diameter of a man's wrist, and
+strikes him on the soles of the feet. Between twenty and a hundred
+strokes are administered, while the victim writhes until he faints. No
+undue exertion is necessary on the part of the executioner, for even
+after a gentle bastinado a man is not expected to be able to walk for
+several days.
+
+The wall-eyed interpreter was brought limping to our cell about three
+days after his punishment. He was brought by Turkish officers, who
+wished to hear from our own lips a denial of his story that we had been
+plotting an escape.
+
+It was a dramatic, and for me rather dreadful, moment. Indignantly and
+vehemently we denied ever having asked his help. Only myself and
+another, besides the interpreter, knew the truth. To the other officers
+at Mosul (there were nine of us then, sharing two little cells) this
+black business is only now for the first time made known. Their
+indignation, therefore, was by no means counterfeit.
+
+"The man must be mad. No one ever dreamed of escaping," I stated,
+looking fixedly into the interpreter's one eye, which, while it implored
+me to tell the truth, seemed to hold a certain awe for a liar greater
+than himself.
+
+"But----" he stammered, cowed by the circumstance that for once in his
+life he was telling the truth.
+
+"But what?" we demanded angrily. "Let the villain speak out. His story
+is monstrous."
+
+"Besides, we are so comfortable here," I added parenthetically.
+
+Eventually the wretched man was led gibbering to an underground dungeon.
+What happened to him afterwards I do not know. I publish this story
+after careful thought, because, if he was "playing the game" by us, why
+did he talk to the Turks about escape? If, on the other hand, he was a
+prison spy, then his punishment is not my affair.
+
+The treachery of the interpreter was an ill wind for everyone, for our
+guards were sent away to the front (which is tantamount to a sentence of
+death) and the vigilance of our new guards was greater than that of the
+old. Intrigue was dead and our isolation complete.
+
+In these circumstances it may be imagined with what excitement I
+received the news that the German Consul wanted to see me in the
+commandant's office. It was the first time for a fortnight that I had
+left my cell.
+
+I entered slowly, and after saluting the company present, first
+generally, and then individually, I took a dignified seat after the
+manner of the country. Ranged round the room were various notables of
+Mosul--doctors, apothecaries, priests, and lawyers. On a dais slightly
+above us sat the Consul and the commandant. For some time we kept
+silence, as if to mark the importance of the occasion. Then a cigarette
+was offered me by the commandant. I refused this offering, rising in my
+chair and saluting him again.
+
+At last the German Consul spoke.
+
+He had been instructed by telegraph, he told me, to pay me the sum of
+five hundred marks in gold. The money came from a friend of my father's.
+I begged him to thank the generous donor, and a whole vista of
+possibilities immediately rose to my mind.
+
+The money would be given me next day, the Consul continued, and a
+_kavass_ of the Imperial Government would go with me into the _bazaar_
+to make any purchases I required.
+
+This conversation took place in French, a language of which the
+commandant was quite ignorant, and I saw that here was an ideal
+opportunity for bringing the plight of our prisoners to light. But the
+Consul, I gathered, wanted to keep on friendly terms with the Turks.
+Some of the things I told him, however, made him open his eyes, and may
+have made his kultured flesh creep.
+
+"I will come again to-morrow," he said hurriedly--"you can tell me more
+then."
+
+After this he spoke in Turkish at some length to the commandant, while
+the latter interjected that wonderful word _yok_ at intervals.
+
+_Yok_, I must explain, signifies "No" in its every variation, and is
+probably the most popular word in Turkish. It is crystallised
+inhibition, the negation of all energy and enthusiasm, the motto of the
+Ottoman Dilly and Dallys. Its only rival in the vocabulary is _yarin_,
+which means "to-morrow."
+
+"Yok, yok, yok," said the commandant, and I gathered that he was
+displeased.
+
+That night I made my plans, and when summoned to the office next day I
+was armed with three documents. The first was a private letter of thanks
+to Baron Mumm for his generous and kindly loan. The second was a
+suggestion that the International Red Cross should immediately send out
+a commission to look after our prisoners at Mosul. And the third was a
+detailed list of articles required by our men, with appropriate
+comments. Items such as this figured on the list:
+
+Soap, for two hundred men, as they had been unable to wash for months.
+
+Kerosene tins, to hold drinking-water, which was denied to our
+prisoners.
+
+Blankets, as over 50 per cent. had no covering at all.
+
+These screeds startled the company greatly. The Consul stared and the
+commandant glared, for the one hated fuss and the other hated me. I was
+delightfully unpopular, but when an Ambassador telegraphs in Turkey, the
+provinces lend a respectful ear. My voice, crying in the wilderness,
+must needs be heard.
+
+Summoning an interpreter, the commandant demanded whether I had any
+cause for complaint; whereupon the following curious three-cornered
+conversation took place--so far as I could understand the Turkish part:
+
+"The men must be moved to better quarters," said I. "Until this is
+arranged nothing can be done."
+
+"He says nothing can be done," echoed the interpreter.
+
+"Then of what does he complain?" asked the commandant.
+
+"The very beasts in my country are better cared for," I said. "Our men
+are dying of hunger and cold."
+
+"He says the men are dying of cold," said the interpreter, shivering at
+his temerity in mentioning the matter.
+
+"The weather is not my fault," grumbled the commandant, "perhaps it will
+be better to-morrow. Yes, _yarin_."
+
+And so on. Talk was hopeless, but before leaving I gave the German
+Consul to understand that he now shared with Abdul Ghani Bey the
+responsibility for our treatment. To his credit, be it said, the
+commandant was removed shortly after our departure.
+
+Two days after this interview we were moved from Mosul, where our
+presence was becoming irksome no doubt. Before leaving I left all my
+fortunate money, except five pounds, with the Consul, asking him to form
+a fund (which I hoped would be supplemented later by the Red Cross) for
+sick prisoners. Twelve months later this money was returned to me in
+full, but I fancy that it had done its work in the meanwhile.
+
+On the day before our journey I went shopping with the Imperial _kavass_
+aforesaid, and it was a most pompous and pleasant excursion. Although I
+wore sandshoes and tattered garments, what with my eyeglass, and the
+gorgeous German individual, dressed like a Bond Street _commissionaire_,
+who carried my parcels and did my bargaining, I think we made a great
+impression upon the good burgesses of Mosul.
+
+We threaded our way among Kurds with seven pistols at their belts, and
+Arabs hung with bandoliers, and astonishing Circassians with whiskers
+and swords. Almost every male swaggered about heavily armed, but a blow
+on their bristling midriff would have staggered any one of them. Their
+bark, I should think, is worse than their bite.
+
+After a Turkish bath, where I graciously entertained the company with
+coffee, we strolled round the transport square, where we chaffered
+hotly for carriages to take us to Aleppo.
+
+The material results of the morning were:
+
+Some food and tobacco for the men staying behind.
+
+Rations for ourselves, consisting of an amorphous mass of dates,
+cigarettes, conical loaves of sugar, candles, and a heap of unleavened
+bread.
+
+Carriages for our conveyance to Aleppo.
+
+But the moral effect of our excursion was greater far. I sowed broadcast
+the seeds of disaffection to Abdul Ghani Bey. To the tobacconist I said
+that the English, Germans, Turks, and all the nations of the earth,
+while differing in other matters, had agreed he was a worm to be crushed
+under the heel of civilisation. To the grocer I repeated the story. To
+the fruiterer I said his doom was nigh, and to the baker and candlestick
+maker that his hour had come.
+
+Everyone agreed. _Conspuez le commandant_ was the general opinion.
+
+"In good old Abdul Hamid's days," they said, "such devil's spawn would
+not have been allowed to live."
+
+It was a matter of minutes before rumours of his downfall were rife
+throughout the city.
+
+Next day he came to see us off, bow-legs, whip, and scowl and all. He
+stood stockily, watching us drive away, and then turned and spat. But
+the taste of us was not to be thus easily dispelled. He will remember
+us, I hope, to his dying day. May that day be soon!
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  "OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION. . . ."
+
+
+We had left a sad party of prisoners behind us, alas! but we had done
+what little we could for them. Confined as we had been, their sufferings
+had only added to our own. The best hope for them lay in the German
+Consul. He could do more, if he wished, than we could have achieved for
+all our wishes. Nothing could have been more hopeless than our position
+at Mosul. But now at least there was the open road before us, and hope,
+and health.
+
+The desert air is magnificent. The untamed winds seemed to blow through
+every fibre of one's being, and clear away the cobwebs of captivity. The
+swinging sun, the great spaces of sand, the continuous exercise, and the
+lean diet of dates and bread, produce a feeling of perfect health.
+Indeed, after a day or two I began to feel much too well to be a
+prisoner. Under the desert stars one thought of the lights of London.
+Perversely, instead of being grateful for the unfettered grandeur of
+one's surroundings, one thought regretfully of the crowded hours one
+spends among civilised peoples. And, oh, how tired I was of seeing
+nothing but men! One of the worst features of captivity is that it is
+generally a story without a heroine.
+
+After the second day of travel I was really seriously in need of a
+heroine, for my friend had developed high fever. If only there had been
+a ministering angel among our party! I did my best, but am not a nurse
+by nature. My friend grew so weak that he could not stand; and I began
+to doubt whether he would get to our journey's end.
+
+But although no heroine came to our help, a hero did. As he happens to
+be a Turk, I will describe him shortly. Let us call him the Boy Scout,
+for he did (not one, but many) good actions every day. Out of his valise
+he produced a phial of brandy, tea, sugar, raisins, and some invaluable
+medicines. All these he pressed us to accept. He even tried to make me
+believe that he could spare a box of Bir-inji (first-class) cigarettes,
+until I discovered he had no more for himself. At every halting place he
+went to search for milk for my friend. Until we had been provided for,
+he never attended to his own comforts. After eighty miles of travelling
+everyone is tired, but although the Boy Scout must have been as tired as
+any of us, for he rode instead of driving, and although he had no
+official position with regard to us, no brother officer could have been
+more helpful or more truly kind. From the moment of our meeting we had
+been attracted by each other. At times, a look or an inflection of voice
+will proclaim a kindred spirit in a perfect stranger. Something happens
+above our consciousness; soul speaks to soul perhaps. So it was with the
+Boy Scout. He was unknown to me when I first saw him, dark-eyed and
+graceful, riding a white horse like a prince in a fairy book, and we
+spoke no common language, but somehow we understood each other.
+
+He was a high official, I afterwards heard, travelling incognito, and
+had been engaged on Intelligence work for his country in Afghanistan.
+But, although an enemy in theory, he was a friend in fact. The war was
+far. Here in the desert we met as brothers. A finer figure of a man I
+have rarely seen, nor a truer gentleman. He was an ardent Young Turk,
+and if other Young Turks were cast in such a mould, there would be a
+place in the world for the race of Othman. But I have never seen another
+like him.
+
+His manners were perfect, and although we discussed every subject under
+the sun in snatches of French and broken bits of Persian, we always
+managed to avoid awkward topics such as atrocities, reprisals, and the
+like. He guessed, I think, that I often thought of escape, and said one
+day:
+
+"I shall fully understand if you try to get away, but you will forgive
+me, won't you, if I use my revolver?"
+
+I assured him I would.
+
+"Good!" he laughed, "because I am a dead shot!"
+
+One day we must meet again, and pick up the threads of talk.
+
+At Ress-el-Ain we separated for a time, and my friend was carried into
+the train, where he lay down and took no further interest in the
+proceedings. I also lay down, exhausted by anxiety. I was glad to be
+quit of the desert. Under other conditions it might have been charming,
+but its glamour is invisible to a captive's eyes.
+
+The train journey was not very interesting, except for the fact that our
+guard commander (excited perhaps by the approach to civilisation, or
+else because he was free from the restraining influence of our teetotal
+Boy Scout) purchased a bottle of _'araq_ and imbibed it steadily on the
+journey between Ress-el-Ain and Djerablisse.
+
+_'Araq_, the reader must know, is otherwise known as _mastic_ or
+_douzico_, and is a colourless alcohol distilled from raisins and
+flavoured with aniseed, which clouds on admixture with water, and tastes
+like cough-mixture. It is an intoxicant without the saving grace of more
+generous vintages. It inebriates but does not cheer.
+
+At Djerablisse, on the Euphrates, our guard commander supplemented the
+fiery _'araq_ with some equally potent German ration rum. By the time we
+got to Aleppo next day, he was reeking of this blend of alcohols. Not
+all the perfumes of Arabia could have stifled its fumes, nor all the
+waters of Damascus have quenched his thirst. He was besotted.
+
+Escape would have been possible then. We had become separated from the
+rest of our party and were in charge of one old, sleepy, and rather
+friendly soldier. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind as to where
+we should pass the night, but we eventually arrived at a small and clean
+Turkish hotel, where we were told, rather mysteriously, that we should
+be among friends.
+
+I looked for friends, but as everyone was asleep, it being then two
+o'clock in the morning, I decided to have a good night's rest before
+making any plans. Our dainty bedroom was too tempting to be ignored. The
+curtains were of Aleppo-work, in broad stripes of black and gold. The
+rafters were striped in black and white. The walls were dead white, the
+furniture dead black. Three pillows adorned our beds, of black, and of
+crimson, and of brilliant blue, each with a white slip covering half
+their length. The bed-covers were black, worked with gold dragons. It
+was like a room one imagines in dreams, or sees at the Russian Ballet.
+
+After a blissful night, between sheets, and on a spring mattress, tea
+was brought to us in bed, and immediately afterwards, as no guards
+seemed to be about, I rose, greatly refreshed, and dressed in haste. My
+idea was to order a carriage to drive us to the sea-coast at Mersina,
+from which place I felt sure it would be possible to charter a boat to
+Cyprus.
+
+But these hasty plans were dispelled by finding the Boy Scout waiting
+for me in the passage.
+
+"Your guard commander was ill," he explained, "so I arranged that you
+should be brought to this hotel, where you are my guests. And I want you
+to lunch with me at one o'clock."
+
+My face fell, but of course there was no help for it. And the Boy
+Scout's hospitality was princely indeed.
+
+After delicious hors-d'oeuvres (the _mézé_--as it is called in
+Turkey--is a national dish) and soup, and savoury meats, we refreshed
+our palates with bowls of curds and rice. Then we attacked the sweets,
+which were melting morsels of honey and the lightest pastry. After
+drinking the health of the invalid (who could not join us of course) in
+Cyprian wine, we adjourned to the Boy Scout's room for coffee and
+cigarettes. Here I found all his belongings spread out, including
+several tins of English bully-beef and slabs of chocolate, which he said
+was his share of the loot taken after our retirement at the Dardanelles.
+He begged us to help ourselves to everything we wanted in the way of
+food or clothing; and he was ready, literally, to give us his last
+shirt. After having fitted us out, he telephoned to the hospital about
+the patient, and made arrangements that he should be received that
+afternoon.
+
+Some hours later, accordingly, I drove to the hospital with my friend,
+accompanied by two policemen who had arrived from district headquarters,
+no doubt at the Boy Scout's request.
+
+We were met at the entrance of the hospital by two odd little doctors.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" squeaked Humpty in French.
+
+"Fever," said I.
+
+"Fever, indeed!" answered Dumpty, "let's look at his chest."
+
+"And at his back," added Humpty suspiciously.
+
+My friend disrobed, shivering in the sharp air, and these two strange
+physicians glared at him, standing two yards away, while the Turkish
+soldier and I supported the patient.
+
+"He hasn't got it," they said suddenly in chorus.
+
+"Hasn't what?"
+
+"Typhus, of course. Carry him in. He will be well in a week."
+
+I doubted it, but the situation did not admit of argument. We carried
+him in, through a crowd of miserable men in every stage of disease, all
+clamouring for admittance. No one, I gathered, was allowed into that
+hospital merely for the dull business of dying. They could do that as
+well outside. Thankful for small mercies, therefore, I left my friend in
+the clutches of Humpty and Dumpty, and even as they had predicted, he
+was well within a week.
+
+There is something rather marvellous about a Turkish doctor's diagnosis.
+Such trifles as the state of your temperature or tongue are not
+considered. They trust in the Lord and give you an emetic. Although
+unpleasant, their methods are often efficacious.
+
+It was now my turn to fall ill, and I did it with startling suddenness
+and completeness. I was sitting at the window of the house in which we
+were confined in Aleppo, feeling perfectly well, when I began to shiver
+violently. In half an hour I was in a high fever. That night I was taken
+to Humpty and Dumpty. Next morning I was unconscious.
+
+I will draw a veil over the next month of my life. Only two little
+incidents are worth recording.
+
+The first occurred about a week after my admittance to hospital, when my
+disease, whatever it was, had reached its crisis. A diet of emetics is
+tedious, so also is the companionship of people suffering from _delirium
+tremens_ when one wants to be quiet. An end, I felt, must be made of the
+present situation. Creeping painfully out of my bed, I went down the
+passage, holding against the wall for support. It was a dark, uneven
+passage, with two patches of moonlight from two windows at the far end.
+Near one of these pools of light I caught my foot in a stone, and
+slipped and fell. I was too weak to get up again. I cooled my head on
+the stones and wondered what would happen next. Then I began to think of
+seas and rivers. All the delightful things I had ever done in water kept
+flitting through my mind. I remembered crouching in the bow of my
+father's cat-boat as we beat up a reach to Salem (Massachusetts) with
+the spray in our faces. And I thought of the sparkling sapphire of the
+Mediterranean and the cool translucencies of Cuckoo-weir. . . . No one
+came to disturb my meditations. The moonlight shifted right across my
+body, and slowly, slowly, I felt the wells of consciousness were filling
+up again. I was, quite definitely, coming back to life. It was as if I
+had really been once more in America and Italy and by the Thames, living
+again in all memories connected with open waters, and as if their solace
+had somehow touched me. Their coolness had cured me, and I was now
+flying back through imperceptible ether to Aleppo. I was coming back to
+that passage in a Turkish hospital. . . .
+
+Did I draw, I wonder, upon some banked reserve of vitality, or were my
+impressions a common phase of illness? Anyway, when I came to, I was a
+different man. The waters of the world had cured me.
+
+Later, during the journey to Afion-kara-hissar, I had a relapse. This
+second incident of my illness was a spiritual experience. Having been
+carried by my friend to the railway station, I collapsed on the
+platform, while he was momentarily called away. So dazed and helpless
+was I that I lay inconspicuously on some sacks, a bundle of skin and
+bone that might not have been human at all. Some porters threw more
+sacks on the pile and I was soon almost covered. But I lay quite still:
+I was too tired to move or to cry out. As bodily weakness increased, so
+there came to me a sense of mental power, over and beyond my own poor
+endowments. I thrilled to this strange strength, which seemed to mount
+to the very throne of Time, where past and future are one. Call it a
+whimsy of delirium if you will, nevertheless, one of the scenes I saw in
+the cinema of clairvoyance was a scene that actually happened some three
+months later, at that same station where I lay. . . . I saw some hundred
+men, prisoners from Kut and mostly Indians, gathered on the platform.
+One of these men was sitting on this very heap of sacks; he was sitting
+there rocking himself to and fro in great agony, for one of the guards
+had struck him with a thick stick and broken his arm. But not only was
+his arm broken, the spirit within him (which I also saw) was shattered
+beyond repair. No hope in life remained: he had done that which is most
+terrible to a Hindu, for he had eaten the flesh of cows and broken the
+ordinances of caste. His companions had died in the desert without the
+lustral sacrifice of water or of fire, and he would soon die also, a
+body defiled, to be cast into outer darkness. For a time the terror and
+the tragedy of that alien brain was mine; I shared its doom and lived
+its death. Later I learnt that a party of men, coming out of the great
+tribulation of the desert, had halted at this station, and a Hindu
+soldier with a broken arm had died on those sacks. I record the incident
+for what it is worth.
+
+Without my friend I should never have achieved this journey. My
+gratitude is a private matter, though I state it here, with some mention
+of my own dull illness, in order to picture in a small way the
+sufferings of our men from Kut. When some were sick and others hale, the
+death-rate was not so high, but with many parties, such as those whose
+ghosts I believe I saw, there was no possibility of helping each other.
+So starved and so utterly weary were they, that they had no energy
+beyond their own existence. Many men must have died with no faith left
+in man or God.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+On arrival at Afion-kara-hissar, we were shown into a bare house. For a
+day I rested blissfully on the floor, asking for nothing better than to
+be allowed to lie still for ever and ever. But this was not to be. On
+the second day of our stay we noticed signs of great excitement among
+our guards. They nailed barbed wire round our windows, and they watched
+us anxiously through skylights, and counted us continually, as if
+uncertain whether two and two made four.
+
+Presently the meaning of their precautions was divulged. Some English
+prisoners had escaped, and our captors were engaged in locking the
+stable door after the steeds had gone. All the prisoners in
+Afion-kara-hissar were marshalled in the street, and marched off to the
+Armenian church, situated at the base of the big rock that dominates the
+town. Hither we also marched, with our new companions, singing the
+prisoners' anthem:
+
+  "We _won't_ be bothered about
+   Wherever we go, we always shout
+   We won't be bothered about. . . .
+   We're bothered if we'll be bothered about!"
+
+greatly to the astonishment of the townsfolk, who connected the Armenian
+church with massacres rather than melody. The leader of our band was a
+wounded officer, in pyjamas and a bowler hat (this being the sum of his
+possessions) who waved his crutch as a conductor's baton. (Alas! his
+cheery voice is stilled, for he died in hospital a year later. R.I.P.) I
+can still see him hobbling along--a tall figure in pink pyjamas, with
+one leg swinging (bandaged to the size of a bolster) and his hat askew,
+and his long chin stuck out defiantly--hymn-writer and hero
+_manqué_--fit leader of lost causes and of our fantastic pageant to that
+church.
+
+It was a gay and motley crew of prisoners of all nationalities and
+conditions of life who entered its solemn and rather stuffy precincts.
+We were all delighted to be "str[-a]fed" in a worthy cause. Three good men
+had escaped, and more might follow later.
+
+To anyone in decent health the month we spent in the Armenian church
+must have been an interesting experience. Even to me, it was not without
+amusement. Imagine a plain, rather gloomy, church, built of oak and
+sandstone, with a marble chancel in the east. Two rooms opened out on
+either side of the altar, and there was a high gallery in the west. In
+the body of the building the English camped. One of the small rooms was
+taken by the French, the other we reserved for a chapel. The Russians
+chiefly inhabited the space between the chancel and the altar, but the
+overflow of nationalities mingled. Our soldier servants were put in the
+gallery. When everyone was fitted in, there was no space to move, except
+in the centre aisle. There was no place for exercise nor any
+arrangements for washing or cooking. During our stay in the church two
+men died of typhus, and it is extraordinary that the infection did not
+spread, considering the lack of sanitation. During the first night of
+the strafe, the Russians, accustomed to pogroms in their own country,
+thought there was a likelihood of being massacred, and kept watch
+through the small hours of the morning by clumping up and down the aisle
+in their heavy boots. All night long--for I was sleepless too--I watched
+these grave, bearded pessimists waiting for a death which did not come,
+while the French and English slept the sleep of optimists. At last dawn
+arrived, and lit the windows over the altar, and a few moments later the
+sunlight crept into the northern transept. Then the Russians gave up
+their vigil, dropped in their tracks, and at once began snoring in the
+aisle, like great watch-dogs.
+
+The noise the two hundred of us made in sleeping was remarkable.
+Probably our nerves were rather queer. The church was never silent
+through the night. Some cried out continually in their slumbers, others
+went through a pantomime of eating. Some moaned, others chuckled. One
+sleeper gave a hideous laugh at intervals. One could hear it deep down
+in his throat, and mark it gradually bubbling to his lips until he grew
+vocal like some horrible hyena. But it is small wonder that the
+prisoners in the church were restless. The marvel is that they slept at
+all. Nearly all of us had lived through trying moments, and had felt the
+hand of Providence, whose power makes one tremble. We knew the shivers
+of retrospection. One officer, for instance, wounded in an attack on
+Gallipoli, had been dragged as a supposed corpse to the Turkish trenches
+and there built into the parapet. But he was none the worse now for his
+amazing experiences, except that he suffered slightly from deafness, as
+his neck had formed the base of a loophole. Then there was a man, left
+as dead after an attack, who recovered consciousness but not the use of
+his limbs, and lay helpless in the path of the Turkish retreat. For an
+hour the passers-by prodded him with bayonets, so that he now has
+twenty-seven wounds and a large gap in his body where there should be
+solid flesh. From the very brink of the valley of the shadow this boy of
+nineteen had returned to life. Again, there was a young Frenchman, who
+lay four days and nights between the lines, dying of the twin tortures
+of thirst and a stomach wound; but by a miracle he survived, and now at
+night, sometimes, when will lost its grip on consciousness, he would
+live those ninety-six hours again. Then there were the submarine crews,
+out of the jaws of the worst death conceivable. One crew had lived for a
+whole day struggling in a net at the bottom of the Dardanelles while the
+air became foul and hope waned, and the submarine "sweated," and depth
+charges exploded so close to them that on one occasion the shock knocked
+a teapot off a table! Hemmed in and helpless, the clammy agony of that
+suspense might well haunt their sleeping hours.
+
+But on the whole our psychology was normal. Only, at nights, if one lay
+awake, did one realise the stress and stark horror through which the
+sleepers had lived. Out of four hundred officers "missing" at the
+Dardanelles, only some forty were surviving at Afion-kara-hissar. This
+fact speaks for itself.
+
+By day we wandered about, so far as the congestion permitted, making
+friends and exchanging experiences. To us, lately from Mesopotamia, the
+then unknown story of Gallipoli stirred our blood as it will stir the
+blood of later men.
+
+I ate and drank the anecdotes of Gallipoli as they were told me. I loved
+the hearing of them, in the various dialects of the protagonists, from a
+lordly lisp to a backwood burr. The brogue, the northern drawl, the
+London twang, the elided g's or the uncertain h's, had each their
+several and distinct fascination. There is joy in hearing one's own
+tongue again after a time of strange speech and foreign faces.
+
+  "Beyond our reason's sway,
+   Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
+   Yearns to its fellow-clay."
+
+The many voices of the many British were better than sweet music.
+
+But we had plenty of sweet music as well. The sailors amongst us were
+the cheeriest crew imaginable.
+
+A résumé of our life at that time would be that we sang often about
+nothing in particular, swore continually at life in general, smoked
+heavily, gambled mildly, and drank _'araq_ when we could get it, and tea
+when we couldn't. Not everyone, I hasten to add, did all these things.
+As in everyday life, there were some who said that the constant
+cigarette was evil, and that cards were a curse, and drink the devil.
+But, again, as in everyday life, their example had no effect on cheerful
+sinners.
+
+  "Here's to the bold and gallant three
+   Who broke their bonds and sought the sea"
+
+sang one of the poets of our captivity, and all of us French, Russians,
+and English, took up the chorus with a roar. The Turkish sentries
+protested vainly, and some, ostentatiously loading their rifles, went up
+to the Western gallery which overlooked the body of the church. As we
+were being treated like Armenians, they could not understand why we did
+not behave like Armenians and herd silently together, as sheep before a
+storm. Instead, two hundred lusty voices proclaimed to anyone who cared
+to listen that we were not downhearted.
+
+See us then at midnight, seated at a table under the high altar. About
+fifty of us are celebrating somebody's birthday, and a demi-john of
+_'araq_ graces the festive board. We have sung every song we know, and
+many we don't.
+
+  "Jolly good song and jolly well sung,
+   Jolly good fellows every one. . . .
+                    Wow! Wow!"
+
+The chorus dies down, and the Master of the Ceremonies, still in pyjamas
+and bowler hat, rises on his sound leg and standing (swaying slightly)
+at the head of the table, raps on it with his crutch for silence.
+
+One officer wears a soup-bowl for a Hun helmet. Others are dressed as
+parodies of Turks, and have been acting in a farce entitled "The
+Escape." Two Irish friends of mine are singing "The Wearing of the
+Green," while others are patriotically drowning their voices. A
+submarine skipper, with a mane of yellow hair over his face, like a lion
+in a picture-book, watches a diplomat dancing a horn-pipe. A little bald
+flying man of gigantic strength and brain, is wrestling with a bearded
+Hercules. Some sailors are singing an old sea-chanty.
+
+The rough deal table, littered with pipes and glasses, the tallow-dips
+lighting the vaulted gloom, the bearded roysterers singing songs older
+than Elizabeth's time, the simple fare of bread and meat, the simpler
+jokes and horseplay, took one back through centuries to other men who
+made the best of war. In Falstaff's time such scenes as these must have
+passed in the taverns of Merrie England. Only here, there were no
+wenches to serve us with sack. We had to mix our own _'araq_.
+
+"Silence, if you please," says he of the long jowl, using his crutch as
+a chairman's hammer. "Silence for the prisoners' band."
+
+The band begins. It consists of penny whistles, banjos, castanets,
+soup-bowls, knives and forks, and anything else within reach. The
+_motif_ of the piece is our release. _Andante con coraggio_ we pass the
+weary months ahead. Then the dawn of our liberation breaks. We smash
+everything we possess, while the train to take us away steams into the
+station.
+
+Sh! Shh! Shhh! Chk! Chk! Chk! Bang! Swish!! We take our seats amid a
+perfect pandemonium. Then the train whistles--louder and louder--and we
+move off--faster and faster and faster and _faster_, until no one can
+make any more noise, and the dust of our stamping has risen like incense
+to the roof, in a grand finale of freedom.
+
+Strange doings in a church, you say? But what would you? We had nowhere
+else to go. There is a time for everything after all, and it is a poor
+heart that never rejoices. I feel sure Solomon himself would have sung
+with us, and proved most excellent company.
+
+On Sunday mornings Divine Service was always well attended. Perhaps by
+contrast with my usual methods of passing the time, those Sabbath hours
+are set as so many jewels in the tarnished shield of idleness. The
+fadeless beauty of our Common Prayer brought hope and consolation to all
+of us who were gathered together. We repeated the grand old words; we
+sang "Fight the Good Fight" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." We shared
+then, however humbly, in the tears and triumph of our cause. We were not
+of that white company that was to die for England, but we could share
+the sorrow of the women who mourned, and of the old who stood so sadly
+outside the fray.
+
+And as through a magic door, I passed from that barren room to a country
+church where the litany for all prisoners and captives went up to
+Heaven, mingled with the fragrance of English roses.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS
+
+
+Afion-kara-hissar means "Black Opium Rock" in Turkish, but it is not as
+interesting a place as it sounds. The only romantic visitors are the
+storks, who use it as an aerodrome on their bi-annual migrations. They
+blacken the sky when they come, in flights a thousand strong, swooping
+and circling over the plain and alighting finally near the black rocks
+that give the town its name. With one leg tucked up, and pensive beak
+back-turned, they form arresting silhouettes against the sunset. And
+curiously enough, the Turkish children know that they bring babies to
+the home.
+
+We lived in four cottages, connected by a common garden. They were quite
+new--so new that they had no windows or conveniences. We fitted frames
+and panes, we erected bathrooms, installed kitchen ranges, made beds out
+of planks and string, and tables out of packing-cases. We made
+everything, in fact, except the actual houses.
+
+I daresay that at this time we were better treated than the officer
+prisoners in Germany. Not so the men. We officers had plenty to eat,
+though it cost a great deal, but the men were always half starved when
+for any reason they could not supplement their ration from Ambassador's
+money, or private remittances from home. Every month the American (and
+later the Dutch) Embassy used to send a sum of money to our prisoners to
+help them buy something more nourishing than the black bread and soup
+provided by the Turks. When this relief did not arrive in time, or the
+Turks delayed in distributing it, our men suffered the greatest
+hardship. Treatment in Turkey was all a question of money. The officers
+could, and did, cash cheques while in captivity, and were able to pay
+for the necessities (and sometimes also the minor luxuries) of
+existence, but the men were entirely dependent on what was given them.
+Although some had bank balances, no one except an officer was allowed to
+write a cheque.
+
+Here it is fitting to say a word in praise of those organisations who
+sent out parcels to our prisoners. No words can express our gratitude to
+them. To us officers, parcels were sometimes in the nature of a luxury,
+though none the less welcome. But to the men, who starved in dungeons of
+the interior, they came as a very present help in time of need. The
+prisoners' parcels saved many lives, and I hope the kind people who
+worked so hard at home against all sorts of difficulties and
+disappointments realise how grateful we are, and what a great work they
+did. Besides the material relief of provisions, the moral effect of a
+parcel from home on the mind of a sick prisoner cannot be over
+estimated. To open something packed by English hands was like a breath
+of home to him.
+
+We were allowed no communication with the men, so it was very difficult
+to help them. Whether the worst done to our prisoners in Germany equals
+the worst in Turkey I do not know. To compare two horrors is profitless.
+But I do know something of the sufferings of our men, and when I write
+of my own petty amusements and comedies of captivity I do not for a
+moment forget the tragedy of their lives.
+
+Light and shade, however, there must be in every picture, else it is not
+a picture at all. And there must be colour in the canvas, however grim
+the subject.
+
+The poppy fields, which give the town the first part of its name,[1] lay
+right underneath our windows, across the station road. In June, when
+they were white with blossom, and the farmers' wives came out to drain
+the precious fluid from the buds, I used to gaze and gaze at the beauty
+of the world, and long for freedom. To be cooped up in a little room
+when the world was green and white, and the sky a flawless blue, and
+summer rode across the open lands, was miserable. It was unbearable to
+be growing old and immobile, like the hills on the horizon, when one
+might be out among the poppy blossoms. Of what use to be alive, if one
+did not share in the youth of the world?
+
+But we were closely guarded in our cottages and rarely allowed out,
+except into the back garden--a bare space some hundred yards by thirty,
+which was the scene of most of our small activities, from early morning
+skipping to the mid-day display of our washing, and from the occasional
+amateur theatricals of an evening to the rare but tense moments of an
+attempted escape.
+
+A diary of my days might run as follows:
+
+_Monday._ Up at 6 a.m. Skipped 200 times. Two eggs for breakfast, tried
+my new _pekmes_.[2] Read _Hilal_.[3] Looked out places on my hidden map.
+Long argument about the use of cavalry in modern war. Walk in garden.
+Mutton cutlets for lunch. Completed my new hammock. Argued about Free
+Trade. Played badminton in garden. Read philosophy with ---- and ----.
+_Sakuska_[4] party with ---- and ---- at 7.30. Watched Polly picking
+opium. Dinner at 8. Soup, eggs, suet; very satisfactory. Bridge and bed.
+
+_Tuesday._ Up at 6.15. Skipped 250 times, and had a boxing lesson.
+Painful. Two eggs for breakfast, but one bad. _Hilal_ did not arrive.
+Argued about yesterday's cavalry news. Walk in garden. No meat for
+lunch. Bitten by mosquitoes in my hammock. Argued about Protection. Ran
+round the garden ten times. My wind is getting worse. _Sakuska_ party
+at sevenish with ---- and ---- in my room. Polly was seen out walking
+with a _posta_.[5] Dinner at 8. Mutton cutlets. Chess and bed.
+
+And so on, _ad infinitum_.
+
+I had at that time come to the conclusion that I could not reach the
+coast from Afion-kara-hissar, so for some time I sought a mental rather
+than a physical escape from my surroundings. Philosophy seemed an ideal
+subject under the circumstances, and in the company of two friends of
+like mind, I made some study of "Creative Evolution." Every afternoon we
+used to forgather for tea, in a little room I had built, where our joint
+contributions provided a well-selected pabulum of cakes and jam and
+Bergson, so that the inner and the outer man were Platonically at one.
+But to plunge from _le tremplin de la vie_ is not easy in captivity.
+Lack of employment cripples imagination. The average mind works best
+when it has practical things to do, and mine, such as it is, boggles at
+abstractions more quickly than it tires of talk.
+
+When this occurred the best thing to do was to laugh. A friend and I
+used to laugh for hours sometimes over weak and washy stories that would
+hardly pass muster, even in the small hours of the morning. But they did
+us good. Generally, however, the time between tea and dinner was spent
+in learned and weighty discussions on appearance, reality, and the
+problems of Being and Not-being.
+
+With my two friends
+
+  ". . . the seed of Wisdom did I sow
+   And with my own Hand arboured it to grow,
+   But this was all the Harvest that I reaped--
+   I came like Water and like Wind I go."
+
+Only unfortunately I did not go. I remained firmly at Afion-kara-hissar.
+When philosophy failed me, the hours spent in planning escapes and
+concocting cyphers were those which passed most easily. But the craft of
+cyphers, interesting though it be, cannot be discussed in print. Like
+the preparation of poisons, it must remain part of the unpublished
+knowledge of the world, until the millennium. As regards escapes, some
+of us thought a great deal, and did very little. There were, however,
+some ingenious attempts made to get to Constantinople. One officer
+conceived the idea of going there to be treated for hydrophobia, and,
+after inflicting suitable wounds in the calf of his leg with a pair of
+nail scissors, he asserted that a certain dog, well known in the camp,
+had exhibited strange symptoms of insanity, amongst others, that of
+suddenly biting him in the leg. This ruse would have succeeded but for
+the fact that the Turks did not treat hydrophobia with any seriousness.
+Kismet takes no account of the Pasteur system. Short of actually
+snapping at someone, the officer could not have established a belief in
+his infection. He found it simpler to feign another ailment. Two other
+officers, however, of a still more picturesque turn of mind, declared
+that they themselves were mad, and actually hung themselves as a proof
+of insanity. They were found one morning by their astonished sentries
+suspended from a rafter, and apparently in the last stages of
+strangulation. Convinced that they were "afflicted of God," the Turks
+sent them to hospital, and carefully watched for any symptoms of
+suicidal mania. After various astonishing experiences, in their rôle of
+madmen, amongst real madmen in a Turkish lunatic ward, they were
+eventually exchanged.
+
+In sheer manual dexterity, our prisoners also showed great resource. The
+soldiers who were employed on making a tunnel through the Taurus, to
+take one example, succeeded in purloining various odds and ends from the
+workshops where they laboured under German supervision, until they
+eventually were able to build for themselves a complete collapsible
+boat. This boat they actually tested at dead of night on a river near
+their camp, before setting out to reach the coast. That success did not
+crown their efforts was sheer bad luck. Luck, also, was against most of
+the forty officers who concerted a simultaneous escape from Yuzgad, and
+prepared for it in absolute secrecy, down to the smallest detail, for
+months beforehand. Some of them even made their own boots. Only eight
+out of the original party actually got out of the country, however.
+Their story, surely one of the most remarkable ever written, has
+recently been published.
+
+The two great difficulties in any attempt to escape were: firstly, that
+the Turks, by spies or otherwise, studied the psychology of every
+individual prisoner, setting special guards on the more enterprising
+among them, and, secondly, that the distance of the camp from the coast,
+and the number of brigands infesting every mile of that distance, was
+such that it was extremely difficult to gain the sea, let alone embark
+upon it.
+
+The spies made some very bad guesses about the intentions of the
+prisoners. One harmless and elderly officer was seen greasing a pair of
+marching boots, and this gave rise to the most sinister suspicions.
+Where could the officer want to march to, except the coast? He was
+immediately asked for his parole, and gave it.
+
+Exercise in any form was a sign of incipient madness in the eyes of the
+Turks. Why, they argued, should anyone in his right mind skip five
+hundred times, and then splash himself with ice-cold water? If he did
+such things, he ought certainly to be placed under restraint. Boxing,
+again, was a suspect symptom. A man who bled at the nose for pleasure
+might commit any enormity. In order to circumvent suspicion it was
+necessary to adopt the utmost caution. The method I myself employed is
+described in a later chapter. One friend of mine, while training for a
+trip to Blighty, habitually carried heavy lead plates hung round his
+waist, to accustom himself to the weight of his pack. Such were the
+internal difficulties. But outside the camp the problems were even more
+puzzling. How to avoid the brigands--how to carry food enough for the
+journey--how to elude our guards and get a few hours' start--what
+clothes to wear and what pack to carry--how to find one's way--how to
+get a boat once the coast was reached--here were well-nigh insoluble
+questions, which provided, however, excellent topics for talk.
+
+I talked about these things for eighteen months. But I will ask the
+reader to skip that dismal procession of moons, and come directly to the
+day when I was asked by the Commandant to sign a paper stating that I
+would not attempt to escape. I naturally refused, as also did another
+officer to whom the same request was made.
+
+Our negotiations in this matter, while interesting to us at the time,
+and involving the composition of several noble documents in French, led
+to the sad result that we were both transferred, at an hour's notice, to
+a little box of a house in the Armenian quarter. Once inside the house,
+with the various belongings we had collected during a twelve-month of
+captivity in Afion-kara-hissar, we two completely filled the only
+habitable room. And although habitable in a sense, this room was already
+occupied by undesirable tenants.
+
+I must here, rather diffidently, introduce the subject of vermin. But,
+saving the public's presence, bugs are the very devil. Other insects are
+nothing to them. Lice the gallant reader may have met at the front.
+Fleas are a common experience. Centipedes and scorpions are well known
+in India. But bugs are Beelzebub's especial pets, and Beelzebub is a
+ruler in Turkey. It is quite impossible to write of my captivity there
+without mentioning these small, flat creatures who live in beds. I
+cannot disregard them: they have bitten into my very being.
+
+Imagine lying down, after a sordid day of dust and disagreeableness. One
+thinks of home, or the sea. One tries to slide out to the gulfs of
+sleep, where healing is. But rest does not come: there is a sense of
+malaise. One's skin feels irritable and unclean. Presently there is an
+itching at one's wrists, and at the back of one's neck. One squashes
+something, and there is a smear of blood (one's own good blood) and one
+realises that one's skin (one's own good skin) is being punctured by
+these evil beasts. Almost instantly one squashes another. A horrible
+odour arises. One lights the candle, and there, scuttling under the
+pillow, are five or six more of these loathsome vermin. They not only
+suck one's blood. They sap one's faith in life.
+
+  "If one could dream that such a world began
+   In some slow devil's heart that hated man,"
+
+indeed one would not be mistaken. In them the powers of Satan seem
+incarnate.
+
+Having killed every bug in sight, one lies back and gasps. And then, out
+of the corner of one's eye, creeping up the pillow, and hugely magnified
+by proximity, another monstrous brute appears. It runs forward,
+horribly avid, and eager, and brisk. All the cruelty of nature is in its
+hideous head, all the activity of evil in its darting body. Presently
+another and another appear. There is no end to them. You kill them on
+the bed, and they appear on the walls. You search out and slaughter
+every form of life within reach, but the bugs still drop on you from the
+ceiling. No killing can assuage their appetite for a healthy body.
+Reckless of danger, they batten on the young. Regardless of death, they
+swarm to silky skin. Of two victims, they will always choose the one in
+best condition.
+
+After being eaten by bugs for some time, one feels infected with their
+contamination. It is almost impossible to rise superior to them. In one
+night a man can live through the miseries of Job.
+
+It may be imagined therefore that our confinement in that little house
+was not amusing. My companion in misfortune and myself lived in that box
+for a week with the bugs, without once going out of the door. Now, to
+stay in a room for a week may not seem a very trying punishment (I was
+later to spend a month in solitary confinement); but when the punishment
+is wholly undeserved, and when, moreover, one is wrongly suspected of
+something one would like to do but has not done, and when one is bitten
+all night, and when from confinement one sees other officers walking
+about in comparative freedom, one naturally begins to fret.
+
+There were compensations, however. Firstly, a friendship grew between
+my companion and myself which I hope will endure through life. Secondly,
+as a prisoner, any sort of change is welcome. And, thirdly, we felt we
+were doing something useful. The Commandant did not dare to force us to
+sign parole. Neither could he keep us permanently in special restraint.
+It is rarely that one gets the chance, as a prisoner, of putting the
+enemy on the horns of such a dilemma.
+
+This Commandant, an ugly, drunken beast, who is now, I hope, expiating
+the innumerable crimes he committed against our men, caused a search to
+be made one day amongst the effects of all the prisoners at
+Afion-kara-hissar. One of the most interesting things he found was a
+diary kept by a senior British officer, with the following entry:
+
+"New Commandant arrived. His face looks as if it was meant to strike
+matches on."
+
+No better description could possibly have been written. He was a vain
+man, and it must have cut him to the quick to see himself as others saw
+him.
+
+After a month of "special treatment" the Commandant learnt that Turkish
+Army Headquarters, fearing reprisals, no doubt, would not support his
+bluff in punishing us if we did not give parole. He had to climb down
+completely.
+
+We were transferred to another house, in the Armenian quarter, already
+occupied by some R.N.A.S. officers, who were all determined to escape
+if opportunity arose. A very cheery house-party we made.
+
+The time was now the year of grace 1917, and our life was organised to
+some extent. Once or twice a week we were allowed to play football, or
+go for a walk. On Thursdays we used to troop down in a body to visit the
+officers in the other houses, and on Monday mornings we were sometimes
+able, with special permission, to attend the weekly fair of coke and
+firewood held in the market-place. All this gave an interest to our
+lives, and money, so long as one was prepared to write cheques, was not
+a source of difficulty. The Turks, in fact, encouraged us to write
+cheques, exchanging them for Turkish notes at nearly double their face
+value (190 piastres for a pound was the best I myself received), because
+they rightly thought that our signature was worth more than the
+guarantees of the Turkish Government. I heard afterwards that our
+cheques had a brisk circulation on the Constantinople Bourse. But one
+was loth to write many. Five pounds is five pounds--and in Turkey it
+represented only a packet of tea or a kilogram of sugar. . . . I saved
+as much as I could for bribes when escaping.
+
+A microscopic, but not unamusing, social life was in full swing. There
+were parties and politics, clubs and cliques. Each prisoner, according
+to his temperament, took his choice between grave pursuits and gay.
+
+There were lecturers (really good ones) who discoursed on a wide range
+of topics, from Mendelism to Mesopotamia. There were professors of
+French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hindustani, and I
+daresay all the languages of Babel, ready to teach in return for
+reciprocal instruction in English. Our library contained many luminous
+volumes, kindly sent out by the Board of Trade. Law and Seamanship,
+Semaphoring and Theology, Carpentry and the Integral Calculus, Gardening
+and Genetics--such is a random selection of the subjects on which there
+were experts available and eager to impart information.
+
+But, personally, my mind resisted the seductions of learning. I learned
+only how to waste time. And sometimes, perhaps, I touched the hem of
+Philosophy's garment, and stammered a few words to her. Otherwise I did
+nothing except try to forget things . . . things seen.
+
+Yet one enjoyed oneself, occasionally. The football was great fun. So
+also were some of the lighter sides of our indoor life. Poker used to
+pass the time. So also, though more rarely, did reading. The plays which
+a dramatist--soon to be eminent, I expect--presented to enthusiastic
+audiences are delightful memories. His revues and topical verses were
+worthy of a wider audience, and I am sure his work--unlike the most of
+our labours--will not be wasted.
+
+But best of all, I think, was to sit in a circle on the floor round a
+brazier on a winter's evening, and sip hot lemon _'araq_, and listen to
+songs and stories. It was a relief to laugh, and forget the fate of
+those we could not help.
+
+  "Sweet life, if love were stronger,
+   Earth clear of years that wrong her . . ."
+
+sang a soft Irish voice, whose melody seemed to melt into the cold of
+one's captivity. . . . Then there were the fancy dress balls held on New
+Year's Eve in 1917 and 1918. So good were they that for the night one
+completely forgot one's surroundings. A very attractive barmaid
+dispensed refreshments behind a table. There were several debutantes,
+and at least one chaperone. Pierrot was there, and Pierrette, and
+Mephistopheles, and Bacchus, and a very realistic Pirate. If some
+reveller in London had looked in on us at midnight he might easily have
+fancied himself at an Albert Hall dance. He would certainly not have
+guessed that all the clothes and furniture and food were home-made, and
+that everyone in the room was a British officer. The self-confident
+flapper, for instance, who could only have given him "the next missing
+three" was a Major in the Flying Corps. And the girl at the bar, with
+big brown eyes, who would have offered him _'araq_ so charmingly was
+really a submarine officer of the Navy, and a well-known figure at "The
+Goat."
+
+After functions such as these, the morning after the night before found
+me wondering where it would all end. If the war lasted another ten
+years, would I ever be fit to take a place in normal life? How long
+could I keep sane in this topsy-turvy world? . . .
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The weather in the winter of 1918 was absolutely arctic. For a month
+there was a very hard frost, and during all this time, had it not been
+for festivities such as the foregoing I should have stayed stupidly in
+bed and hibernated until the spring. Intenser cold I have never felt. In
+the room in which we dined the water froze in our glasses on several
+occasions while we were eating our evening meal. Icy winds howled
+through the house, and the paper windows we had improvised (to replace
+unobtainable glass) had burst, through weight of snow. Also, the plaster
+of the outer walls of our mansion had peeled off, so that cold blasts
+penetrated through the walls. With few clothes and only one pair of
+leaky boots it was impossible to keep warm and dry-shod. Fuel, of
+course, was very scarce. In my bedroom some precious quarts of beer,
+which I was preserving for Christmas, froze and cracked their bottles. I
+invited a party to taste my blocks of amber ice, but they were better to
+look at than to swallow.
+
+Under these climatic conditions washing was a labour that took one the
+best part of the morning, and until I caught a chill I used to economize
+time and fuel by rolling in the snow on the flat roof of my house. This
+amused me, and surprised the neighbourhood, but it was a poor substitute
+for a bath. That winter was a black, bleak time.
+
+During the hard frost it was impossible to escape, but we used
+occasionally to reconnoitre the sentries outside our house after
+lock-up. I have spent some amusing moments in this way, especially in
+watching one sentry (generally on duty at midnight) who used to warm
+himself by playing with a cat. With pussy on one arm and his rifle on
+the other, he formed a delightfully casual figure. It would have been
+quite easy to pass him, but the difficulties lay beyond. . . .
+
+I then thought, wrongly I dare say, that the only reasonable hope of
+success lay in starting from Constantinople, and it was to this end that
+my real schemes were shaping. But I thought it well to have two strings
+to my bow, and besides, I considered no day well spent which did not
+include some practical effort towards escape.
+
+A complex of causes contributed to this idea, which became almost an
+obsession. First, I dare say, was boredom. Second, the feeling that one
+was not earning one's pay or doing one's duty by remaining idly a
+prisoner. And thirdly--or was it firstly?--the condition under which our
+men were living and the crimes which had been committed against them
+made it imperative that someone should get to England with our news. It
+was high time, and past high time, that the civilised world should know
+how our prisoners fared.
+
+I have already written the savage story of our life at Mosul, where the
+men died from calculated cruelty. The history of the Kut prisoners is
+even worse, for the crime was on a greater scale.
+
+That garrison, debilitated from the long siege and the climatic
+conditions of Mesopotamia, were marched right across Asia Minor with
+hardly any clothes, no money, and insufficient food. Their nameless
+sufferings will never be known in full, for many died in the desert,
+clubbed to death by their guards, stripped naked, and left by the
+roadside. Others were abandoned in Arab villages, when in the last
+stages of fever or dysentery. Others, more fortunate, were found dead by
+their companions after the night's halt, when the huddled sleepers
+turned out to face another day of misery. Hopeless indeed the outlook
+must have seemed to some lad fresh from the fields of home. The brutal
+sentries, the arid desert, the daily deaths, the daily quarrels, the
+bitterness of the future, as bleak as the acres of sand that stretched
+to their unknown destination, the dwindling company of friends, the grip
+of thirst, the pangs of hunger, and the pains of death--such was the
+outlook for many a lad who died between Baghdad and Aleppo. Ghosts of
+such memories must not be lightly evoked amongst those alive to-day,
+friends of the fallen, but always they will haunt the trails of the
+northern Arabian desert.
+
+Through it all our men were heroes. To the last they showed their
+captors of what stuff the Anglo-Saxon is made. The cowardly Kurds, who
+were the worst of the various escorts provided between Baghdad and
+Aleppo, never dared to insult our men unless they outnumbered them four
+to one. Even then they generally waited until some sick man fell down
+from exhaustion before clubbing him to death with their rifle-butts.
+
+In the middle of the desert, between Mosul and Aleppo, a friend of mine
+found six half-demented British soldiers who had been propped up against
+the wall of a mud hut and left there to die. There was no transport, no
+medicines. Nothing could be done for them. They died long before the
+relief parties organised at Aleppo could come to their rescue.
+
+At Aleppo the hospital treatment was extremely bad.
+
+All men who were fit to move (and many who were not) were sent on in
+cattle trucks to various camps in the centre of Anatolia, and when at
+length they reached these camps after vicissitudes which were only a
+dreary repetition of earlier experiences, they came upon the plague of
+typhus at its height, and naturally, in this weakened state, succumbed
+by scores and hundreds.
+
+To see a body of our soldiers arriving at Afion-kara-hissar, pushed and
+kicked and beaten by their escort, was terrible.
+
+Our men were literally skeletons alive, skeletons with skin stretched
+across their bones, and a few rags on their backs. This is an exact
+statement of things seen. They struggled up the road, hardly able to
+carry the pitiful little bundles containing scraps of bread, a bit of
+soap, a mug, all, in short, that they had been able to save from
+systematic looting on the way.
+
+In silence, and unswerving, they passed up that road to the hospital,
+and all who saw those companies of Englishmen so grim and gallant in
+adversity must have felt proud their veins carried the same blood.
+
+Once in hospital our prisoners fared no better. There were no beds for
+them, and hardly any blankets or medicines. They died in groups, lying
+outside the hospital.
+
+It was a common sight to see sad parties of our men passing down this
+same road, away from the hospital this time, and towards the cemetery.
+Those weary processions, consisting of four or five emaciated men, with
+a stretcher and a couple of shovels, used to pass underneath our windows
+going to bury their comrade. They were a party of skeletons alive,
+carrying a skeleton dead.
+
+[Footnote 1: Afion = opium.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Pekmes_: a substitute for jam and sugar, made from
+raisins.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The _Hilal_: a Moslem morning paper, published in French.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Sakuska_: Russian for hors d'oeuvres--such as sardines,
+frogs' legs, onions, bits of cheese, or indeed anything edible.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Posta_: a Turkish sentry.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON
+
+
+The contrast of tragedy and farce and the incidents, and the lack of
+incident, which I have attempted to sketch in the foregoing chapter, had
+a marked mental effect on all of us. But each felt the effects of
+confinement differently. With me, I came to look on my life in Turkey as
+something outside the actuality of existence. I did not feel "myself" at
+all. I was disembodied, left with no link with the outer world, except
+memory and anticipation. I was in a dark forest far from all avenues of
+activity such as the sanity of society and the companionship of women.
+My world seemed make-believe, and my interests counterfeit.
+
+I worked at a novel with a friend of mine, and for a time that seemed
+something practical to do. But there was always the fear that it would
+be taken from us by the Turks, and the possibility that we would never
+publish it.
+
+Doubt and indecision lay heavy on me. I did not know how long captivity
+would last. A criminal's sentence is fixed: not so a prisoner of war's.
+He is dependent on matters beyond his control, and a will beyond his
+narrow ambit. To reach that outside will, and to form a part of it
+again, was my dominating wish. Through the glasses of captivity the
+world was colourless and distorted. Only freedom could make me see it
+again aright. And when freedom seemed remote, the world was very
+colourless.
+
+The novel amused me by snatches. Learning languages amused me at times.
+But these things were really the diversions of a child, who dreams
+through all its lesson-time of another and a fairer world.
+
+But, unlike a child, I became absorbed in self. I analysed my moods, and
+thought gloomily about my health. I mourned my youth, as my hair turned
+grey. The sorrows of the spinster were mine and the griefs of the
+middle-aged. The value of material things was magnified. The pleasures
+of the palate, I confess, assumed an exaggerated importance. I found a
+new joy in food, and sometimes I dreamed that I was eating. Also I
+contracted the habit of smoking cigarettes in the middle of the night.
+And I learnt that the effect of alcohol, when one is very depressed, is
+like putting in the top clutch of the car of consciousness, so that one
+runs forward smoothly on the road of life. In short, I enjoyed eating
+and drinking and smoking in a way that I had never done before, and
+never will again, I hope. But I know now why public-houses flourish.
+After my own experience of deathly dullness, I heartily sympathise with
+those who seek relief in alcohol and nicotine. They may be poison, but
+in this imperfect world the deadliest poison of all is boredom.
+Prohibition, as I saw it in Turkey, when tobacco was short, or food was
+scarce, or alcohol was forbidden, did not impress me as being
+beneficial. The fact is, we all need stimulant of one sort or another.
+Normally our work, our home, or our hopes supply this need. Almost
+everyone in the world is struggling (however carefully they may disguise
+the fact) to be other than they are, and better (or worse) than they
+are. We strive after superlatives and are rarely satisfied by them. But
+in captivity, as in other circumstances of distress, this stay in life,
+this hope of something different and wish for something _more_, is
+suddenly removed. We are left without _stimuli_. Nothing seems to
+matter. One's mental and material habits inevitably relax. A muddy idea
+seems as good as a clear one--a sloppy suit of clothes serves as well as
+a tidy one. Energy wanes.
+
+But why? The reason is that the average mind cannot live on
+abstractions. It must grapple with something practical. One must sharpen
+one's wits on the world, and it is just this that as a prisoner one
+cannot do. One cannot "lay hold on life," because there is no life to
+lay hold of, except an unnatural and artificial existence, where the
+sympathy of women and the dignity of work are absent. That was the crux
+of the matter. Sympathy and dignity were lacking in our life. We heard
+of advances and retreats as from another sphere. We read of great
+heroisms and great sorrows without being close to them. We had no part
+in the quarrel. We were in a squalid by-way, living out a mean tragedy,
+while the fate of all we loved was in the balance. Never again would we
+go fighting.
+
+From the moment of our capture we had passed into a strange narrow life,
+where the spirit of man, while retaining all its old memories and hopes,
+could not express them in action.
+
+Captivity is a minor form of death, and I was dead, to all intents and
+purposes.
+
+Often, lying a-bed in the early morning, I used to feel that my body was
+completely gone, and that only a fanciful and feverish intelligence
+remained. I remember especially one dawn in the spring of 1917, when I
+watched two figures passing down the station road. Slouching towards the
+station, and all unconscious of the beauty of the waking world, came a
+soldier with his pack and rifle. He wore the grey Turkish uniform, his
+beard was grey, his cheeks were also grey and sunken. Slowly, slowly he
+dragged his heavy feet towards the train that would take him away to the
+war. The train had been already signalled, I knew (for I kept notes of
+the traffic in those days), and I found myself hoping anxiously that he
+would not be late. The sooner he was killed the better. He was old and
+ugly and ill. If only such as he could perish. . . . Then my thought
+took wings of the morning. From the soldier, plodding onwards devotedly,
+as so many men have gone to their deaths, my eye ranged across the
+plains, lying dim and dark to eastward, to the horizon mountains of the
+Suleiman Dagh, whose snow had already seen the messengers of morning
+hasting from the lands below our world. And man seemed mean and minute
+in the purposes of Nature. So ugly was he, such a blot on the landscape
+with his trains and soldiers, that I wondered he continued to exist.
+There was a life above our life in the dawn. The powers of the world
+knew nothing of this soldier's hopes and fears. To them his endeavours
+were a comedy. A huge mountain-back, with the gesture of some giant in
+the playtime of long ago, seemed shrugging its shoulders at this
+ridiculous straying atom of a moment's space. The train came in, and I
+saw its smoke above the tree-tops of the station. It whistled shrilly,
+and the soldier quickened his pace. No doubt he was late. Perhaps he
+still survives, and is toiling even now towards some trench. Anyway he
+passed from my ken, but I still stood at the window, looking towards the
+mountains and the sky.
+
+Then there passed an archaic ox-cart, creaking down the road slowly, as
+it has creaked down the ages, from the night of Time. It was drawn by a
+white heifer, whose shoulders strained against the yoke, for it was a
+heavy cart. But she went forward willingly, resignedly. Work was her
+portion. She would live and die under the yoke. She licked her cool
+muzzle, dusted flies with her neat tail, and looked forward with
+wistful eyes that seemed to see beyond her working world, to some
+ultimate haven for the quiet workers. Somewhere she would find rest at
+last. To my feverish imagination that white heifer symbolised the pathos
+of all the driven souls who go forward unquestioning to destiny.
+
+And the soldier with his pack was a type also of voiceless millions who
+carry the burden of our civilisation.
+
+We stagger on, under the bludgeonings of chance, and but rarely lift our
+eyes to the dawn, although a daily miracle is there. Someone conducts
+the orient-rite, regardless of the lives of men, which come sweeping on,
+on the tide of war, to end in foam and froth. Yet from this stir of hate
+and heroism some purpose must surely rise. From the travail of the
+trenches some meaning will be born.
+
+I saw things thus, through images and symbols. Across the vast inanity
+of that waiting time, streaks of vision used to flash, like distant
+summer lightning. Impermanent, but beautiful to me, they lit a fair
+horizon. Else, all was dark.
+
+To call this time a death in life seems an overstatement, but if my
+experiences in Turkey had any mental value at all, it was just this: to
+teach me how to die. A curtain had come down on consciousness when I was
+captured. Since then I only lived in the Before and After of captivity.
+My old self was finished. I saw it in clear but disjunct pictures of
+recollection: pig-sticking, sailing, dining, dancing, or on the road to
+Messines one hard November night when feet froze in stirrups and horses
+slipped and struck blue lights from the cobbles. And my new self awaited
+the moment of freedom. It still stirred in the womb of war.
+
+Even so, in my belief, do the souls of our comrades lost consider their
+lives on earth and look back on their time of trial with interest and
+regret. Discarnate, they cannot achieve their desires, yet they long to
+manifest again in the world of men. With level and unclouded eyes they
+consider the incidents of mortality, and find in them a Purpose to
+continue. There is work for them in the world through many lives, and
+love, which will meet and re-meet its love. And so at last, drawn by
+duty and affection, those who have woven their lives in the tapestry of
+our time will one day take up the threads again.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE COMIC HOSPITAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+The one bulwark against morbidity was hope of an escape. Only by getting
+away, or at any rate making an attempt, could I justify my continued
+existence, when so many good men were dying in the world outside--and at
+our own doors.
+
+Now certain spies, as I have told, were constantly on the look-out for
+officers likely to give trouble to our custodians. The Commandant, I
+knew, suspected me of wanting to escape, owing to my general eagerness
+for exercise. I thought, therefore, that if I could induce him to
+believe that I was ready to dream away my days at Afion-kara-hissar, I
+should have established that confidence in my character which is the
+basis of all success. I consequently purchased some two pounds of a
+certain dark and viscous drug, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. With a sort of
+theatrical secrecy (for even in Turkey Mrs. Grundy has her say), I
+proceeded to prepare the stuff by boiling it for two hours in a copper
+saucepan. I did this on a day when one of the Turkish staff came to the
+house to distribute letters. Naturally the smell attracted notice. I
+made flimsy excuses to account for it.
+
+After distilling the decoction, filtering, and then boiling it down to
+the consistency of treacle, the first phase of my little plan was
+ended. One of the Turkish staff, a certain Cypriote youth, had become
+thoroughly interested in my proceedings.
+
+I showed him, under vows of secrecy which I knew he would not keep, the
+stage property I had bought, consisting of two bamboo pipes, a lamp, a
+terra-cotta bowl, some darning needles, and the "treacle" in a jampot.
+Fortunately the most of these implements I had obtained second-hand from
+a real opium-smoker, so that they did not look too new. Also I had read
+de Quincey and Claude Farrčre. After discussing the subject at length,
+the Cypriote suggested that we might smoke together one evening. I
+agreed with alacrity.
+
+One night after lock-up, therefore, I slipped out of my house, with my
+paraphernalia hidden under my overcoat. A specially bribed Turkish
+sentry brought me to a silent, shuttered house in a side street. Here
+the door was opened by an evil-looking harridan, who showed me upstairs
+to a thickly carpeted room, strewn with cushions, on which my host was
+lying. The blinds were drawn and only the glimmer of a little green lamp
+lit the wreaths of whitish smoke which curled down from the low ceiling.
+The fumes stang my palate and thrilled me with expectancy. I could
+taste, rather than smell, that strange savour of opium which fascinates
+its devotees.
+
+I lay down, in the semi-darkness, on a sofa beside my host. After some
+general conversation, I showed him my pipes and needles, but he said
+that for that evening I should only smoke the opium of his brewing.
+
+"It is a joy to have found a fellow-spirit," I sighed. "When one has
+opium one wants nothing more."
+
+"How many pipes do you smoke a day?" he asked.
+
+"Fifty," I said boldly, adding, "when I am in practice."
+
+"That is nothing," said the Cypriote. "I smoke a hundred. Come, let us
+begin. Time is empty, except for opium."
+
+"But who will prepare our pipes?" I asked.
+
+"We will do that ourselves," he answered.
+
+"I can't," I had to admit. "I--I am used to an attendant, who hands me
+my pipes already cooked."
+
+"There is no one here," he said, "except an ugly old woman. But I will
+show you myself. Half the pleasure is lost if another hand prepares the
+precious fluid. See, you take a drop of opium--so--on the point of the
+needle, and holding it over the flame of the lamp, you turn and turn it
+gently until it swells and expands and glows with its hidden life. From
+a black drop it changes to a glowing bubble of crimson. Then you cool it
+again, moulding and pressing it back to a little pellet upon the glass
+of the lampshade. Then again you cook it, and again you cool it. Only
+experience can tell when it is ready to smoke. It is an art, like other
+arts. I would rather cook opium than write a poem. It is even better
+than money. Now you take your pipe and, heating the little hole through
+which the opium is smoked, so that it will stick, you thrust your
+needle--so--into the hole, and then withdraw it again, leaving the
+pellet of perfect peace behind. And now, lying on your left side, with
+your head well back amongst the cushions, you hold your pipe over the
+flame and draw in a long and grateful breath. In and in you
+breathe. . . ."
+
+I watched him take a deep draught of the drug, and then lie back among
+the cushions with heavy-lidded eyes. For a full half-minute he remained
+silent and dreaming, then expelled the thick white smoke with a sigh of
+bliss.
+
+It was my turn now, and not without some dismay (although curiosity was
+probably a stronger emotion) I accepted a pipe of his preparing. I
+inhaled in and in--I choked a little--and then lay back with a
+dreaminess that was not simulated, for it had made me feel giddy.
+
+"You prepare a most perfect pipe," I coughed through the acrid fumes.
+
+But I had realised immediately that I had not an opium temperament. In
+all I smoked ten small pipes that first evening, without feeling any ill
+effects beyond a heavy lassitude, which lasted all through the following
+day. I was disappointed and disgusted by the experience. The beautiful
+dreams are a myth. So also is the deadly fascination of the drug. I
+loathed it more each time I tasted it.
+
+Yet those nights I lay on a sofa, _couché ŕ gauche_ as opium-smokers
+say, weaving a tissue of deceit into the grey-white clouds encircling
+us, will always remain one of the most curious memories of my life. The
+couches, the needles and the pipes, the pin-point pupils and wicked
+profile of my host, as he leaned over the green glimmer of the lamp
+which burnt to the god to whom his heart was given, and the growth of
+that god in him, as pipe followed pipe to stir his consciousness, and
+the beatitude that lit his features, as he looked up from amidst the
+cushions to that dream-world of subtle smoke, to be seen only with
+narrowed eyes, where princes of the poppies reign: this had a glamour
+against the drab setting of captivity which I will neither deny nor
+excuse. I was doing something practical once more. Instead of reading
+philosophy or playing chess, I was engaged in a human game, whose stake
+was freedom.
+
+A measure of success attended my efforts, for I learnt from the
+Cypriote, in the course of subsequent visits to his house, that if I
+wished for a holiday to Constantinople it would not be difficult to
+arrange.
+
+I think we were both playing a double game.
+
+We both tried to make the other talk, he with the idea of getting
+information about the camp and I in the hope of picking up some hint as
+to where to hide in Constantinople. But card-sharpers might as well have
+tried to fleece each other by the three card trick. His knowledge of
+Constantinople seemed to be _nil_, while the information he got out of
+me would not have filled his opium pipe. After these excursions I used
+sometimes to wonder whether I was not wasting my time and health. But
+time is cheap in captivity, and as to health, I used to counteract the
+opium by counter-orgies of exercises. In the early mornings I skipped
+and bathed in secret, but in the daytime I tottered wanly about the
+streets, and whenever I saw the Cypriote I told him that I craved for
+_confiture_: this being our name for opium.
+
+In my condition it was an easy matter to be sent to the doctor. I told
+him various astonishing stories about my health, chiefly culled from a
+French medical work which I found in the waiting-room of his house.
+Within a month I was transferred to Haidar Pasha Hospital, near
+Constantinople. Had I been in brutal health, the operation to my nose
+which was the ostensible reason of my departure would not have been
+considered necessary. But I had been removed from the category of
+suspects, and was now considered an amiable invalid.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The guard on my northward journey was more like a sick attendant than a
+sentry. I showed him some opium pills, which I declared were delicious
+to take. He evinced the greatest interest, and I was able to prevail on
+him to swallow two or three as an experiment. Unfortunately, after he
+had taken them, I discovered they contained nothing more exciting than
+cascara. They did not send him to sleep at all.
+
+We arrived at Haidar Pasha without incident. Before being admitted, my
+effects were searched, and stored away, but being by that time
+accustomed to searches, I was able to hide, upon my person, a variety
+of things that would be useful in an escape, notably a compass, and a
+complete set of maps of Constantinople and its surroundings.
+
+Captain Sir Robert Paul, with whom I had discussed plans at
+Afion-kara-hissar, was already installed in hospital, where he was being
+treated for an aural complaint. His friendship was an inestimable
+stand-by through the months that followed. Through scenes of farce and
+tragedy he was always the same feckless and fearless spirit. In success,
+as in adversity, he kept an equal mien. Without him, the most amusing
+chapters in my life would not have happened, and if I write "_I_" in the
+pages which follow, it is only because Robin, as I shall hereafter call
+him, has not been consulted about this record of our days together.
+Owing to circumstances beyond our control, the full responsibility for
+this story must be mine. The seas divide us. I cannot ask his help, or
+solicit his approval.
+
+The hospital at Haidar Pasha was the most delightfully casual place
+imaginable. One wandered into one's ward in a Turkish nightshirt, and
+wandered out again at will, the only limits to peregrination being the
+boundaries of the hospital and one's own rather fantastic dress. Unless
+one asked loudly and insistently for medicines or attendance, no one
+dreamed of doing anything at all in the way of treatment. The only
+attention the patients received was to be turned out of the hospital
+when they were either dead or restored to health. Under the latter
+category a crowd of invalids came every day, who were generally ejected
+just before noon, clamouring loudly for their mid-day meal, and the
+unexpended portion of their day's ration. Of deaths in hospital I
+witnessed only one, although scores occurred during my stay. One evening
+an Armenian officer was brought into my ward with severe wounds in the
+head, due to a prematurely exploded bomb. He was laid flat on a bed, and
+instantly proceeded to choke. No one came near him. It seemed obvious to
+me that if he was propped up by pillows he would be able to breathe. But
+no one propped him up. I suggested to the hospital orderly that this
+should be done, and he said, "Yarin." And "yarin" the poor officer died
+of lack of breath. How sick men survived is a mystery to me, because
+they were never attended to, unless strong enough to scream. Screaming,
+however, is a habit to which the Turkish patient is not averse. He does
+not believe in the stoical repression of feeling. Strong and brave men
+will bellow like bulls while their wounds are being dressed. Unless,
+indeed, one makes a fuss, no one will believe one is being hurt. I have
+seen mutton-fisted dressers tearing off bandages by main force, while
+some unfortunate patient with a stoical tradition sweats with agony and
+bites his lips in silence.
+
+But although the Turk cries out, he is by no means a coward under the
+knife. His stern and simple faith seems to help him here. There is
+something very fine about a good Moslem's readiness for death. No man
+who knows the religion, or has lived intimately among its adherents, can
+fail to give it reverence. Before God all men are equal, and when one
+walks about in a nightshirt, one begins to realise this fundamental
+truth. There was a great friendliness in that hospital, and a cordiality
+that coloured the otherwise sordid surroundings. Poor jettison of the
+war, broken with fighting, or rotten with disease, or shamming sick, we
+forgathered in the corridors, or in the garden, with no thought for the
+external advantages of rank and fortune.
+
+Matches at that time had practically disappeared from Turkey, and
+whenever one issued from the ward with a cigarette between one's lips,
+one was beset by invalids in search of a light. Who lit the original
+vestal fire I do not know, but I am sure it was never extinguished in
+that hospital. Patients smoked and talked all night.
+
+We took our part with pleasure in this picnic life. Robin, with
+remarkable skill, had contrived to smuggle in various forbidden bottles,
+which contributed greatly to our popularity. One drink especially, from
+its innocuous appearance and stimulating properties, found great favour
+amongst the patients. It was known as "Iran," and consisted of equal
+parts of sour milk and brandy. A teetotaller might safely be seen with a
+long glass of creamy-looking fluid, yet Omar Khayyám himself would not
+have despised a jug of it. Imbibing this, we used to hold polyglot
+pow-wows with the patients, in French, German, Arabic, Italian, and
+Turkish. Sugar and tea from our parcels also did much to promote
+cordiality.
+
+The recent explosion in Haidar Pasha station, which blew out all the
+windows of our (adjacent) hospital, and the first British air raid of
+1918 were frequent topics of discussion. With regard to these events we
+invented a beautiful lie, namely, that the station explosions were the
+result of bombardment by a new type of submarine we possessed, but that,
+_per contra_, the first air raid, which did no damage, was not carried
+out by British aircraft at all. We proved by assorted arguments in
+various languages that the bombs on Constantinople had come from German
+aeroplanes, the raid being a display of Hun frightfulness, to show what
+would happen if Turkish allegiance wavered over the thorny question of
+the disposal of the Black Sea fleet. Nothing was too improbable to be
+true in Constantinople, and nothing indeed was too absurd to be
+possible. Enver Pasha had made a monopoly in milk, and a corner in
+velvet. The new Sultan was intriguing for the downfall of the Young
+Turks. The funds of the Committee of Union and Progress had been sent to
+Switzerland, where a Turkish pound purchased thirteen francs of Swiss
+security, or half its face value. Fortunes were won and lost on the
+meteoric fluctuations of paper money. A lunatic inmate of the hospital
+(formerly a Smyrniote financier, driven to despair by the press gang)
+told me that he could make a million on the bourse if they only set him
+free for a few hours, and I daresay he was right. Anything might have
+happened during those summer days. Secret presses were engaged in
+printing broadsheets of revolution. The nearer the Germans got to Paris,
+the more persistent were the stories of their defeat. The air was
+electric with rumours. The story about German aeroplanes bombing
+Constantinople, which we had started in jest, was retailed to us later,
+in all earnestness, and with every detail to give it probability.
+Anything to the discredit of their ally found currency in the Turkish
+capital.
+
+An Ottoman cadet in my ward, for instance, used to impersonate a German
+officer ordering his dinner in a Turkish restaurant. He managed somehow
+to convey the swagger, and the stays, and the stiff neck. Clattering his
+sword behind him, he used to seat himself stiffly at a table and call
+haughtily for a waiter. Then, after glaring at the menu, he used to
+order--a dish of haricot beans. "Des haricots," he used to snap, with
+hand on sword-hilt in the exact and invariable Prussian manner.
+
+But to the last, the Germans were all-unconscious of what went on behind
+their corseted backs. Only at the time of the armistice, when they were
+pelted with rotten vegetables, did they realise that something was
+amiss.
+
+To return to our hospital. Our day began with rice and broth at six in
+the morning. At nine the visiting doctor made his rounds and the
+patients who needed medicines clamoured for them. Unless one made a
+fuss, however, one was left in perfect peace. At midday there was more
+rice and broth, with occasional lumps of meat. The afternoon was devoted
+to sleep, and the evenings to exercise in the garden, or intrigue. Rice
+and broth concluded the day. This sounds dull, but after two years of
+prison life, the hours seemed as crowded as a London season's. To begin
+with, we did not attempt to subsist on hospital fare, but commissioned
+various orderlies and friends to buy us food outside. Then there was the
+never-failing interest of making plans. A certain person raised our
+hopes to the zenith by telling us of the possibility of a boat calling
+for us at night, at a landing place just below the British cemetery. The
+idea was to embark in this boat, row across to a steamer, and there
+enter large sealed boxes in which we would pass the Customs up the
+Bosphorus, and then make Odessa. The plan was almost complete. The
+shipping people had been "squared." It only remained for us to select
+the spot from which to embark. With this object in view, we reconnoitred
+the British cemetery which abutted on the hospital grounds. It was then
+being used as an anti-aircraft station, and when, a few days later, the
+first air raid came, we saw the exact positions of the Turkish machine
+guns, spitting lead at our aircraft from among the Crimean graves. This
+air raid, and the atmosphere of "frightfulness" caused thereby, rather
+interfered with our escape plans. First of all we were forbidden to go
+near the British cemetery, and later other small privileges were
+curtailed which greatly "cramped our style." For some time we could not
+get in touch with the person already alluded to.
+
+Meanwhile the arrival of our aeroplanes was a very stimulating sight.
+Everyone in hospital turned out to see the show.
+
+Crump! crump! Woof!--said the bombs.
+
+Woo-woo-woom!--answered the Archies.
+
+Kk-kk-kk-kk! chattered the machine guns.
+
+"God is great," muttered the hospital staff.
+
+"Give me a gun!" cried one of the two British officers posing as
+lunatics (I have already related how they had pretended to hang
+themselves). "Give me a gun," he reiterated loudly--"this is all a plot
+to kill me, and I must defend myself!"
+
+Calmly and confidently our machines sailed through the barrage, dropped
+their bombs, turned to have a look at Constantinople, and then sailed
+away.
+
+The British lunatic shook his fist at them, as he was led back gibbering
+to his ward. The head doctor was much concerned as to his condition.
+
+"Every day," he told me--"some new madness takes that poor deluded
+creature. Eighteen pounds were paid to him recently and he promptly tore
+the notes in half and scattered them about the room. When he was asked
+if he wanted anything from the Embassy he wrote for a ton of carbolic
+soap, and half a ton of chocolate. On another occasion he jumped into
+the hospital pond with his pipe in his mouth, declaring he was on fire.
+I dare not send him to England without an escort, for he would do
+himself some injury. As to the other British lunatic, he has not spoken
+for five weeks. I do not know what is to be done."
+
+Neither did I, for I was not then aware of the patient's true condition,
+and had no desire to "butt in." They had lived for several months among
+the other madmen in hospital, and I thought it probable that they had
+really lost their reason.
+
+The lunatics' ward was a terrifying place. My experience of it, although
+limited to a few hours, was enough to last a lifetime. In order to
+secure drugs for "doping" sentries I complained of severe insomnia one
+day, and was sent to the mental specialist. While waiting for him, I
+noticed that one of the British lunatics was regarding me with
+unblinking furious eyes, while the other was praying--apparently for the
+souls of the damned. The Greek financier was singing softly to himself,
+and applauding himself. There is something very alarming about madness.
+One feels suddenly and closely what a narrow margin divides us from a
+world of terror. Their souls stand forlornly by their bodies, knocking
+at the door of intelligence.
+
+When the mental specialist arrived, I was seized by grave alarm. What if
+he should find me insane? . . .
+
+He held up a finger, tracing patterns in the air, and told me to watch
+it closely. While I watched him, he watched me.
+
+"The moving finger writes," I thought, "and having writ . . ."
+
+"I can see your finger perfectly," I protested nervously.
+
+"Far from it," said the enthusiastic specialist. "You are not following
+it with your eyes."
+
+"I am--indeed I am," said I, squinting at his fat forefinger.
+
+"I am told you cannot sleep," continued my interlocutor. "You seem to me
+to be suffering from nervous exhaustion."
+
+"A little sleeping draught . . ." I suggested.
+
+"I ought to observe you for a few days," he answered.
+
+"Not here?" I quavered.
+
+"Yes, here."
+
+"But I do not like the--other lunatics," said I, in a small voice.
+
+Eventually, to my great delight, I was allowed to remain where I was,
+and was given (as reward for the danger I had endured) several cachets
+of bromide and a few tablets of trional.
+
+I returned in triumph to my ward, and Robin and I laid our heads
+together. With the drugs we now possessed it would be possible to send
+our sentries to sleep when we were moved from hospital, if the person
+who was making plans for us to be taken on board a Black Sea steamer
+failed to communicate in time. But the question now arose as to how much
+of these drugs was suitable for the Turkish constitution. The object was
+to administer a sleeping draught, not a fatal dose. If we were
+transferred from Haidar Pasha we knew we should be sent for a time to
+the garrison camp of Psamattia (a suburb of Constantinople on the
+European side) and our intention was to inveigle our attendants into
+having lunch during our journey there, and ply them with Pilsener beer,
+suitably prepared, until they were somnolent and unsuspicious enough to
+make it feasible to bolt.
+
+Neither the bromide nor the trional could be tasted in cocoa or coffee,
+we discovered, so one evening, I regret to say, I carried out an
+experiment on a wounded patient, who was otherwise quite fit, although
+rather sleepless, by giving him a cachet of bromide and a tablet of
+trional in a cup of cocoa. In about half an hour his eyelids began to
+flicker, and he was soon sleeping like a lamb. Next morning he
+complained of a slight headache. Should he chance to read these lines I
+hope he will accept my apologies. _Ŕ la guerre comme ŕ la guerre._
+
+So now we had the beginning of a second plan, in case the box business
+_via_ the Black Sea failed. But, in the event of escaping during our
+journey to Psamattia, we had no very clear idea of where to hide. That
+there were Greek and Jewish quarters in Galata and in Pera we knew, and
+also in the northern part of Stamboul, but the chances of detection in
+any of these localities were great, especially as we had no disguises at
+the time. There remained a possibility of hiding in the ruins of recent
+fires, but it was difficult to see how we were to live there. On the
+whole the Black Sea trip seemed to offer the most favourable
+opportunities of success. But to carry it out, we had to wait, and wait,
+and still to wait, until we heard from our agent again. And eventually
+the time came when we could wait no longer. . . .
+
+A week or two is nothing in Turkey, but unfortunately we had attracted a
+certain amount of undesirable attention in hospital by our popular
+supper-parties and reputed wealth. There was also a Bulgarian nurse who
+had an uncanny intuition about our intentions. She told the visiting
+doctor that two other nurses were in the habit of bringing us brandy.
+She also said we were both quite well and had never in fact been ill at
+all. The latter statement was true, but the former I can only attribute
+to pique, the brandy having come from other sources. However, this did
+not affect the fact that we were politely but firmly told that we had
+greatly benefited by our stay in hospital. This was equivalent to a
+notice of dismissal. We would have to go. Thereupon we both instantly
+pulled very long faces, and went to see the ear and nose specialist. He
+was our one hope of being allowed to stay on.
+
+While waiting for an interview, I had an opportunity of seeing an
+eminent army surgeon at work on the Turkish soldiers. Let me preface
+this description by emphasising the fact that he _was_ eminent. He was
+no rough bungler, but a clever practitioner, well known for his
+professional and human sympathy. This is the scene I saw.
+
+The doctor sat on a high stool, by the window, with a round reflector
+over his right eye. A glass table beside him was strewn with
+instruments. A lower stool seated his victims. In his hand he held a
+thing like a small glove-stretcher. Behind him two young assistants
+stood, looking like choir boys who had been fighting, in their robes of
+blood-stained white. The room was full of miserable shivering soldiers.
+
+A deaf old man takes the vacant seat in front of the doctor. The
+glove-stretcher darts into his ear. A question is asked. The old man
+gibbers in reply. Glove-stretcher darts into the other ear. Another
+question. More gibbering. Both his ears are soundly boxed, and he is
+sent away. The next is a goitre case, too unpleasant for description.
+Suddenly the attendants come forward, and pull off all his clothes. The
+doctor removes the reflector from his right eye, and stares for a moment
+at the ghastly skinny shape with a sack hanging from its throat. Then he
+dictates a prescription to one of the attendants, and seizes the next
+soldier. Prescription and clothes are thrown at the naked man, who walks
+out shivering, holding his apparel in his arms. Meanwhile another victim
+is already trembling on the stool. This man trembles so violently that
+he falls down in a faint. The attendants cuff him back to consciousness.
+Painfully he gets up and tries to face the instrument again. But as the
+glove-stretcher is being inserted into his nostril, he turns the colour
+of weak tea and again silently collapses. The doctor does not give him a
+second look. One of the attendants drags his limp body to a corner,
+while another patient takes the seat in front of the doctor. After a few
+more cases have been examined, the two attendants return to the
+unconscious man in the corner, drag him back to the doctor and hold his
+lolling head to the light, while the glove-stretcher does its work. Then
+he is pulled away, like a dummy from an arena, to the door of the
+consulting room, where (and here I confess I expected a scene) a woman
+awaited him. But she seemed to consider it all in the day's work.
+Perhaps poor Willie was subject to fainting fits. . . .
+
+I knew I would not faint, but I cannot say I took my turn on that seat
+with a light heart. The surgeon was alarmingly sudden, and already the
+room looked like a shambles.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+To my relief, he used a new glove-stretcher.
+
+"Slightly deflected septum," he pronounced, and his diagnosis was later
+confirmed in London.
+
+"I hurt my nose boxing," I explained conversationally, "and cannot now
+breathe through it. I would like to stay----"
+
+"Can't stay here." he said instantly and incisively; "no time to deal
+with your case."
+
+"But I can't breathe through my nose."
+
+"Breathe through your mouth," he suggested kindly, but a little coldly.
+
+Now, it is impossible to "wangle" a man who sits over you with a
+reflecting mirror screwed into his right eye. I vanished with suitable
+thanks.
+
+Robin had better luck with his ear. He could have stayed on in hospital
+and would very likely have been invalided back to England eventually.
+But he absolutely refused to exchange the comfortable security of a
+bodily affliction for the vivider joys of escape. In spite of my advice
+to stay in hospital, he decided, to my great delight, that we would try
+our luck together.
+
+All hope of remaining in hospital was now at an end.
+
+That evening at sunset we were in the garden, looking across the blue
+waters of the Marmora to the mosques and minarets of old Stamboul,
+flushed with the loveliest tints of pink.
+
+It was the last evening but one of Ramazan. To-morrow the crescent of
+the new moon would appear over the dome of San Sofia, as a sign to all
+that the fast had ended, and the time of rejoicing come. Between that
+moon and the next moon an unknown future lay before us. And whatever our
+fate, it was sure to be something exciting.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  OUR FIRST ESCAPE
+
+
+Our crossing from Haidar Pasha to the garrison camp at Psamattia was a
+tame affair. Early in the day we had made up our minds that it would be
+unwise to escape, as well as unkind to our indulgent sentries: unwise,
+because we realised that if we bolted blindly from a restaurant, we
+would probably be caught at the first lodging-house at which we tried to
+gain admission; and unkind because, in common chivalry, we decided that
+our sentries were too trustful to be drugged.
+
+Our day, therefore, was spent in seeing the sights of Pera, gossiping
+over a cocktail bar, purchasing some illicit maps under cover of a large
+quantity of German publications, and generally learning the lie of the
+land. But it might be indiscreet even at this distance of time to
+describe in too great detail the sources from which we obtained our
+information. One name, however--like King Charles' head with Mr.
+Dick--will keep coming into this book. I cannot keep it out, because it
+is impossible to think of my escape and escapades without thinking of
+the gallant lady who made them possible.
+
+Miss Whitaker, as she then was (she is now Lady Paul), knew something
+about all the escapes which took place in Turkey, and a great deal about
+a great many of them. Against every kind of difficulty from foes, and
+constant discouragement from friends[6] she boldly championed the cause
+of our prisoners through the dark days of 1916 and 1917. She visited the
+sick in hospital, she carried plum puddings to our men working at San
+Stefano, she was a never-failing source of sympathy and encouragement.
+She sent messages for us, and wrote letters, and lent us money and
+clothes. She was the good angel of the English at Constantinople, a
+second--and more fortunate--Miss Cavell.
+
+And she was the _Deus ex machina_ of my escapes. Having said this, I
+will say one thing more. I cannot here put down one-tenth of the daring
+work that Lady Paul did for me and others. The reason may be obvious to
+the reader; at any rate it is binding on me to say far less than I would
+wish.
+
+On reaching the prisoners' camp at Psamattia, our first object was to
+get in touch with her whom we had already heard of as the guardian
+spirit of prisoners. With this object in view, we asked to be allowed to
+attend Sunday service at the English church. Religious worship, we
+pointed out, should not be interfered with, further than the necessities
+of war demanded. After some demur the Commandant agreed, and accordingly
+we went to church. Here it was[7] that we met our guardian angel for the
+first time. She trembled visibly when we mentioned our plans for escape,
+and I thought (little knowing her) that we had been rash to speak so
+frankly.
+
+"I strongly advise delay," she whispered--"but I will meet you again at
+the gardens in Stamboul in two days' time--four o'clock. I'll be reading
+a----"
+
+"_Haidé, effendim, haidé, haidé_," said our sentry, and her last words
+were lost.
+
+Further conversation was impossible, but the forty-eight hours which
+followed were vivid with anticipation.
+
+How were we to manage to get to the gardens of the Seraglio? Would we
+meet her? Could we talk to her? Would she have a plan? . . .
+
+On the day appointed, Robin and I complained of toothache, and asked to
+be allowed to go into the city to see the dentist. We were at once
+granted permission.
+
+From the dentist's to the Seraglio garden was only a step, but we were
+four hours too early as yet to keep the rendezvous. However, a large
+lunch, in which our sentries shared, smoothed the way for a little
+shopping excursion into Pera. Here, amongst other things, we bought some
+black hair dye, which completed our arrangements for escape. Other
+paraphernalia, such as jack-knives, twenty fathoms of rope, maps,
+compasses, sand-shoes, chocolate and "dope," we had already acquired.
+Nothing now remained but to find a hiding place, when once we had
+escaped.
+
+At about three o'clock we were sitting in a café, eating ices, with our
+complacent sentries, who had every reason to be complacent for they had
+been sumptuously fed, as well as liberally tipped. They were quite
+willing to do anything in reason, and nothing could have been more
+natural than a stroll in the Seraglio gardens.
+
+But just then Robin began to get "Spanish 'flu," which was raging in the
+city. The symptoms were as sudden as they were unmistakable. Violent
+shivering, giddiness, weakness--all the ills that flesh is heir to,
+waylaid him at this vital juncture. He was completely incapable of
+action.
+
+There was no help for it. I left him shaking and shivering in the café,
+in charge of one of our two sentries, and, after a little persuasion
+and some palaver (during the course of which another bank-note changed
+hands) I induced the other sentry to accompany me for a stroll. Unless
+we walked in the gardens, I assured him, we should both fall ill with
+the deadly contagion of my friend. Nothing but fresh air and iced beer
+could avert that fever. On the way, therefore, we stopped for a glass
+and I managed to drop a small dose of potassium bromide into the
+sentry's mug before it was given to him.
+
+A little before four the sentry and I were smoking cigarettes on a seat
+in the Seraglio gardens quite close to the Stamboul entrance gate.
+
+It was a hot day, with thunder-clouds hanging low. Toilers of the city
+passed us fanning themselves. Turkish officers had pushed back their
+heavy fur fezzes, and civilians wore handkerchiefs behind theirs. German
+ladies panted loudly, and even the _hanoums_ appeared to be a little
+jaded: their small feet and great eyes, that so often twinkle in the
+streets, had grown dull with the oppression of the day. Small wonder my
+sentry nodded.
+
+Presently, with a walk that no one could mistake, a tall and slim figure
+entered, dressed in white serge coat and skirt. I watched her, on the
+opposite footpath, strolling down the shady avenue with an insouciant
+grace. She held a novel and a little tasselled bag in her right hand.
+She sat down some two hundred yards away, and began reading calmly and
+coolly, apparently quite unconscious of the feverish world about her.
+
+With a hasty glance at my sentry, I rose and walked very slowly away. He
+woke at once, and followed. I stopped to look at some flowers, yawned,
+lit another cigarette and said to the sentry that it was too hot to
+walk. I intended to sit for a little in the shade on the opposite side
+of the road, and then we would go back to join our friend at the café.
+
+We meandered across the road, and I sank into a seat beside the guardian
+angel. There was no room for the sentry, so he obligingly retired into
+the shrubbery behind.
+
+Without taking her eyes from her novel, she began by saying I was not to
+look at her, and that I was to speak very low, looking in the opposite
+direction.
+
+She then asked where my companion was, and on hearing he had the 'flu,
+she told me that she also had been attacked by it at the very moment
+that we had spoken to her at church, and that it was only with
+difficulty she had been able to keep the rendezvous to-day. I tried to
+thank her for coming, but she kept strictly to business, and
+concentrated our conversation to bare facts. Her news ranged from the
+world at war, to plans for Robin and me, in vivid glimpses of
+possibility. She covered continents in a phrase, and dealt with the
+plans of two captives in terse but sympathetic comment. When she had
+told me what she wanted to say, she opened her small bag and took out a
+piece of paper, rolled up tight, which she flicked across to me without
+a moment's hesitation.
+
+"You had better go now," she said.
+
+But my heart was brimming over with things unsaid.
+
+"I simply cannot thank----" I began to stammer.
+
+"Don't!" said she, to the novel on her knees.
+
+And so, with no salute to mark the great occasion, I left her. Neither
+of us had seen the other's face.
+
+Here I must apologise for purposely clouding the narrative. The plans I
+made are only public so far as they concern myself.
+
+On rejoining Robin, I found him palpitant and perturbed. The fever was
+at its height and he ought to have been in bed. Yet it was urgently
+necessary that evening, before returning, to make certain investigations
+in the native quarter of the city. How to do this without attracting the
+notice of the two sentries, perspiring but still perceptive, was a
+matter of great concern to me. I thought of saying that I was going to
+buy medicine for Robin, but in that case one of the sentries (probably
+Robin's, for my own had grown very somnolent with beer and bromide)
+would certainly accompany me. Then I bethought me of going to wash my
+hands in a place behind the café and slipping out of a back door. But
+there was no back door, and Robin's sentry had followed me to the
+wash-place, and stood stolidly by the door until I came out.
+
+I sat down again, thinking and perspiring furiously,[8] and ordered
+more beer. But this time I failed to manipulate the bromide. Robin's
+sentry saw me with the packet in my hand and asked me what it was.
+
+"It is a medicine for reducing fat," said I, and of course after this I
+had to keep the drugged beer for myself. But the sedative did no harm.
+After sipping for some minutes I had a happy thought.
+
+There was a particular brand of cigarettes which were only obtainable at
+a few shops in Constantinople. I asked the waiter if he had them. He had
+not.
+
+"I must have a packet," I said, standing up--"there is a shop just down
+the street where I can get them."
+
+And without taking my hat or stick (as a proof of the innocence of my
+intentions) I strolled out of the café.
+
+The sentries did not follow. It was too hot.
+
+I rushed down the crowded thoroughfare as if all the hounds of heaven
+were on my trail. I fled past policemen, dodged a tram, bolted up a
+side-street, and arrived gasping at the doorway I sought. After a hasty
+survey of the locality, so as to identify it again at need, I rushed
+back to the restaurant, buying a box of Bafra-Madčne cigarettes on the
+way. Robin was still shivering; the sentries were mopping their large
+faces. All was well. Our work was done.
+
+Trying not to look triumphant, I got Robin into a cab, and we drove back
+to Psamattia camp.
+
+During the next few days I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not so Robin, who
+was grappling with his fever. Later, however, when he was convalescent,
+we used to go down to the seashore together to bathe. In the evening, we
+used to sup off lobsters at a restaurant on the beach. In the water one
+felt almost free once more, and in the restaurant, when one was not
+gambling "double or quits" with the lobster-merchant as to whether we
+should pay him two pounds for his lobster or nothing at all, we were
+talking politics with other diners. Those days of Robin's convalescence
+were delightful. The moon was near its full, which is the season when
+lobsters ought to be eaten, and the climate was perfect, and our hopes
+were high.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Psamattia is one of the most westerly suburbs of Stamboul. From it, a
+maze of tortuous streets lead to the railway terminus of Sirkedji, and
+the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn. On the eastern side of the
+Golden Horn lie the European quarters of Galata and Pera. From our camp
+at Psamattia to the house where we intended to hide was a distance of
+five miles, and there were at least two police posts on the way. But
+with our hair dyed black (we had already effected this transformation,
+and it is astonishing how it changes one's appearance) and fezzes on our
+heads, we trusted to pass unnoticed as Greeks.
+
+Our plan had a definite and limited objective. We wanted to escape by
+night from Psamattia and hide in Constantinople. Once in hiding, we
+trusted to going by boat to Russia, or else going with brigands to the
+Mediterranean coast, where our patrols might pick us up. But the first
+object was to get away from the camp. Until this was achieved it was
+almost impossible to make definite arrangements. At first we had thought
+that it would be an easy matter to give our sentries the slip when we
+were out shopping. But when it came to the point, we felt scruples about
+bolting from men we had bribed and wheedled so often. All's fair in love
+and war, but yet if it could be avoided we did not want to abuse their
+trust in us.
+
+There remained the alternative of escaping by night from the house where
+we were interned. But when Robin had become fit enough to try (and of
+course he was all agog to be off at the first possible moment) we found
+the guards were more alert than we thought.
+
+Our situation was roughly this: We were housed in the Armenian
+Patriarchate, next to the Psamattia Fire Brigade, and there were
+sentries in every street to which access was possible, by craft or by
+climbing. The window of our room, which was directly over the doorway
+where the main guard lived, looked out on to a narrow street, across
+which there was another house, inhabitated by Russian prisoners of war.
+At first we thought it might be possible to pretend to go to the Russian
+house, and, while casually crossing the street, to mingle with the
+passers-by, and melt away unnoticed in the crowd. We tried this plan,
+but it was no good. The guards on our doorway were alert, and followed
+our every movement. . . . To slip out with the Armenian funerals which
+used to go through our gateway was another project doomed to
+failure. . . . To get into the Armenian church, on the night before a
+burial, remove the occupant of a coffin and so pass out next morning in
+the centre of the funeral procession, was an idea which excited us for a
+time. But the melodrama we had planned could not be executed, because
+the church was locked and guarded at night. . . . To climb out of the
+back window of the Russian house also proved impossible, because a
+sentry stood outside it always. . . . Every point was watched. Two
+sentries armed with old Martini rifles (of archaic pattern but
+unpleasantly big bore) were posted directly below our window. Two more
+similarly equipped were opposite, at the door of the Russian house. One
+man with a new rifle was behind the Russian house. Two more were behind
+ours, and one was in a side street. There were also men on duty at the
+entrance to the Fire Brigade.
+
+After considering all sorts of methods we decided on a plan whose chief
+merit was its seeming impossibility. No one would have expected us to
+try it.
+
+Our idea was to climb out of our window at night, and by crossing some
+ten foot of wall-face, to gain the shelter of the roof of the next door
+house. This roof was railed by a parapet, behind which we could crouch.
+Along it we would creep, until we reached a cross-road down the street.
+Here we would slip down a rope to the pavement, and although we would be
+visible to at least five sentries during our descent, it seemed probable
+that no particular sentry would consider himself responsible for the
+cross-roads, which was beyond their beat.
+
+To climb out of a window set in a blank wall, about thirty feet above a
+busy street where four sentries stood, did not seem a reasonable thing
+to do. But the wall was not as impassable as it seemed. Two little
+ledges of moulding ran along it, under our window-sill, so that we had a
+narrow yet sufficient foothold and handhold until we reached the roof of
+the adjoining house. And although we would be visible during our
+precarious transit of the wall-face, we knew that people rarely look up
+above their own height, and rarely look for things they don't expect.
+
+It was the night of the twenty-seventh of July, when a bright full moon
+rode over the sea behind our house, that we decided to make the attempt.
+
+The first point was to get out of the window without being seen. . . . A
+Colonel of the Russian Guards, a little man with a great heart,
+volunteered to help us. Directly we extinguished the lights in our room,
+he was to engage the sentries at the door of the opposite house, where
+he lived, in an animated conversation, keeping them interested, even by
+desperate measures if need be, until our first ten yards of climbing was
+successfully accomplished.
+
+After a cordial good-bye, he left us. We took off our boots and slung
+them round our necks, drank a stirrup cup to our success, roped
+ourselves together, coiled the remainder of the rope round our waists,
+stuffed our pockets and knapsacks with our escaping gear, and then blew
+out our lamp, as if we were going to bed. Crouched under the window-sill
+we waited. . . . The sentries below us were sitting on stools in the
+street. The two men opposite were lolling against the doorpost, and the
+moon, rising behind our house, while still leaving the street in shadow,
+had just caught their faces, so that their every eyelash was visible. To
+them came the little Colonel, and only the top of his cap reached the
+moonlight. We heard his cheery voice. We saw both sentries looking down,
+presumably helping themselves to his cigarettes.
+
+That waiting moment was very tense. An initial failure would have been
+deplorable, yet many things made failure likely. At such times as these,
+the confidence of one's companion counts for much, and I shall never
+forget Robin's bearing. Anyone who has been in similar circumstances
+will know what I mean. He went first out of the window. I followed an
+instant later. . . . And once the first step was taken, once my feet
+were on that two-inch ledge and my hands clung to the upper strip, the
+complexion of things altered completely. Anxiety vanished, leaving
+nothing but a thrill of pleasure. One was master of one's fate.
+
+At one moment we were in view of four sentries (two at our door and two
+opposite), a Turkish officer who had come to take the air at our
+doorway, and several passers-by in the street. But no one looked up. No
+one saw the two men, only five yards away, who clambered slowly along
+the string-course, like flies on a wall.
+
+After gaining the roof of the next house, we lay flat and breathless
+behind the parapet, and thanked God we had succeeded in--not making
+fools of ourselves, anyway.
+
+The parapet was lower than we thought, and in order to get the advantage
+of its cover it was necessary to remain absolutely prone in the gutter
+of the roof. In this position, from ten o'clock till half past eleven,
+we wriggled and wriggled along the house-tops, past a dead cat and other
+offensive objects, until at last we had covered the distance. Once,
+during this stalk, my rope got hitched up on a nail, and I had to
+wriggle back to free it. And once, having raised myself to take a look
+round, one of the sentries on the Russian house ran out into the street
+and started making a tremendous noise. I don't know what it was about,
+but it alarmed me very much, and condemned us to marble immobility for a
+time.
+
+At last, however, we reached the end of our wriggle. But here a new
+difficulty confronted us. Directly overlooking the part of the roof from
+which we contemplated our descent, and less than ten yards away, an
+officer of the Psamattia Fire Brigade sat at an open window, looking
+anxiously up and down the street, as if expecting someone to keep an
+appointment. His window was on a level with us. So intently did he stare
+that I thought he had seen us. But we lay dead-still behind the parapet,
+and it became apparent, as time passed and he still stood disconsolate
+by the window, that we were not the objects of his languishing
+regard. . . . And meanwhile the moon--the kindly old moon that sees so
+much--was creeping up the sky. Soon she would flood us with her
+radiance. Even a love-sick officer of the Fire Brigade could not fail to
+notice us across the narrow street, lit by the limelight of all the
+universe. For an hour this annoying Romeo kept watch, while we discussed
+the situation in tiny whispers, and cursed feminine unpunctuality. But
+at last, just as we had determined to "let go the painter" and take our
+chance, he began to yawn and stretch and look towards his bed, which we
+could see at the further end of his room. "You are tired of waiting: she
+isn't worth it!" I sent in thought-wave across the street. He seemed to
+hesitate, then he yawned again, and just as our protecting belt of
+shadow had narrowed to a yard, he gave up his hopes of Juliet, and
+retired.
+
+That was our moment.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE AT PSAMATTIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+We stood up, and made the rope fast to a convenient ring in the parapet.
+Traffic in the street had ceased. The sentries were huddled in their
+coats, for it was a chilly summer night. Up street, a dog was yapping,
+and its voice seemed to stab the silence. Before stepping over the
+parapet I took a last look at the world I left and thanked God.
+
+The waiting was over. In two seconds' time we should have gained
+freedom, or a slug from some sentry's rifle.
+
+It took two seconds to slip down thirty feet of rope, and two seconds is
+a long time when your liberty, if not your life, is at stake. I half
+kicked down the sign-board of a shop in my descent, and Robin, who
+followed, completed the disaster. In our haste, we had cut our hands
+almost to the bone, and had made noise enough to wake the dead.
+
+Yet no one stirred. We were both in the street, and no one had moved.
+
+After two and a half years of captivity we were free men once more. The
+slothful years had vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Can you realise
+the miracle, liberty-loving reader, that passes in the mind of a man who
+thus suddenly realises his freedom? . . .
+
+I don't know what Robin thought, for we said nothing. We lit cigarettes
+and strolled away. But inside of me, the motors of the nervous system
+raced.
+
+The only other danger, in our hour and a half's walk to our destination,
+was being asked for passports by some policeman. In our character as
+polyglot mechanics, whenever we passed anyone, I found it a great
+relief to make some such remark as:
+
+  Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein,
+  Fest steht and treu die Wacht am Rhein.
+
+But Robin, who could not understand my German, paid little heed.
+
+Only once we did think we were likely to be recaught. At about one in
+the morning, as we were passing the Fatih mosque, we heard a rattle on
+the cobbles behind us. A carriage was being galloped in our direction.
+It might well contain some of the Psamattia garrison. We doubled into
+some ruins, and lay there, while the clatter grew louder and louder.
+
+A few wisps of cloud crossed the moon, that had reached her zenith.
+Their silent shadows moved like ghosts across the desolation of the
+city. A cat was abroad. She saw us, and halted, with paw uplifted and
+blazing eyes.
+
+Then the carriage passed, empty, with a drunken driver. It rattled away
+into the night, and we emerged, and took our way through the streets of
+old Stamboul, under the chequered shade of vines.
+
+[Footnote 6: This applies in no way to the Americans, who did everything
+possible for our men before they left Constantinople. Their assistance
+was always of the most prompt and practical nature. It may be invidious
+to mention names in this light account of adventure, but I cannot
+refrain from giving myself the pleasure of saying how grateful I am to
+Mr. Hoffman Phillips, of the American Embassy. His name, as also the
+name of his chief, Mr. Morgenthau, is indissolubly connected with our
+early prisoners. I wish to thank him from the bottom of my heart, and I
+know many of all ranks who will join with me in this--far too
+meagre--tribute to his activities and ability.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Let no one think the clergyman in charge aided or abetted
+our secular efforts to escape. On the contrary, on a later occasion,
+when Robin, as a poor and distressed prisoner hiding from the Turks,
+endeavoured to find sanctuary for a few hours in the church, he was
+expelled therefrom, so that our enemies should not complain that the
+House of God was used for anything but worship.]
+
+[Footnote 8: During the afternoon I lost over seven pounds in weight.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  A CITY OF DISGUISES
+
+
+We knocked softly at the door of the house that was to be our home, and
+then waited, flattened in the shadow below it, quite prepared for the
+worst. It was then four o'clock in the morning. It seemed too much to
+hope that we would be welcome.
+
+But we were. The door opened cautiously about one inch, and two little
+faces were seen, low down the crack. Behind them, someone held a light.
+
+Then the door was flung wide, and we saw on the stairs a whole family of
+friendly people, male and female, old and young, all in night dress, and
+all with arms outstretched in rapturous greeting. We might have been
+Prodigal Sons returning, instead of two strangers whose presence would
+be a source of continual danger.
+
+Hyppolité and Athéné, the twins, aged eight, who had first peeped at us,
+now took us each by the hand, and led us upstairs.
+
+"The last escaped prisoner we had here was a forger," said Hyppolité to
+us.
+
+"He was a friend of father's," added Athéné over her shoulder, "and he
+escaped from prison about six weeks ago. He was afraid that the police
+would find his tools, so he threw them all into our cistern. They are
+there now."
+
+We reached the top floor, and were shown by the twins into an apartment
+containing a double bed with a stuffy canopy of damask.
+
+"This is the family bedroom," they said.
+
+"And where are we to sleep?" I asked.
+
+"Here," said Thémistoclé, the proud owner of the house. "My sister and I
+and the twins were using the bed until your arrival, but now we will
+sleep in the passage."
+
+"The passage?" I echoed. "Haven't you any other beds, and were you all
+four using this one?"
+
+"Yes, yes. The other rooms are full of lodgers. There are three officers
+of the Turkish army here at present. But they won't disturb you, because
+they are hiding too."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" said I, sitting on the bed--"but your sister can't sleep in
+the passage, can she?"
+
+"Certainly, she's quite used to that sort of thing. It's safer also, in
+case the police come."
+
+"I know all the police," said Athéné, "even when they are not in
+uniform; I can recognise them by their boots."
+
+"And we are always on the look-out for them," added Hyppolité. "If the
+police come to search the house you will have to get into the cistern."
+
+"Where the forger threw his tools," explained Athéné.
+
+Coffee and cigarettes were produced, and ointment for our lacerated
+hands. We were made to feel quite at home. . . . The family stayed and
+talked to us until dawn broke. They thoroughly appreciated the story of
+the escape, and clapped their hands with glee at the idea of the Turks'
+amazement when they discovered that we had vanished, leaving no trace
+behind us.
+
+"They will never find the rope," said Thémistoclé, "because the
+shopkeeper over whose shop it is will certainly cut it down and hide it,
+for fear of being asked questions."
+
+"And now we must thank the Blessed Saints for your escape," said an old
+lady who had not previously spoken.
+
+She went to a glass cupboard, opened it, and lit two candles. A scent of
+rose-leaves and incense came from the shrine, which contained oranges
+and ikons and Easter eggs and a large family Bible.
+
+For a moment or two we all stood silent.
+
+Then----
+
+Just when I was expecting a prayer, the old lady blew out the candles
+and shut up the cupboard and crossed herself. The thanksgiving was over,
+and we dispersed with very cordial good-nights. I think Thémistoclé
+wanted to kiss us, but we felt we had been through trials enough for the
+time and refused to offer even one cheek.
+
+The family retired to the passage and settled down to rest with squeaks
+and giggles, while Robin and I, after thanking God for all His mercies,
+with very humble and grateful hearts, threw ourselves down on the bed,
+too exhausted to undress, and slept the sleep of free men.
+
+Next instant, it seemed to me, although in reality two hours had
+elapsed, we were awakened by the twins, who looked on us as their
+especial charges, and thought us tremendous fun.
+
+"Time to get up," they said excitedly. "The house might be searched at
+any minute."
+
+Instantly we were afoot.
+
+"Where are the police?" I asked.
+
+"There is a detective standing at the corner of our street," said
+Hyppolité.
+
+"And they often come to see if all our lodgers are registered!" added
+his sister.
+
+We bundled our maps, compasses, and other belongings into a towel, and
+staggered downstairs, with fear and sleep battling for mastery in our
+minds.
+
+But in the pantry, we found the seniors of the household quite
+unconcerned. There was no imminent danger of a search. . . . On the
+other hand, there was the immediate prospect of breakfast.
+
+A saucepan was actually being buttered (and butter was worth its weight
+in gold) to make us an omelette. By now we had been thoroughly stirred
+from sleep, and realised how hungry we were. I forget how many omelettes
+we ate, or how much butter we used, but I think that that charming
+breakfast cost a five-pound note, or thereabouts.
+
+When it was over, an engaging sense of drowsiness began to creep over me
+again, but the twins were adamant.
+
+"You must practise getting into the cistern," said Hyppolité.
+
+"Like the forger did," chimed in Athéné--"and then you must arrange a
+hiding-place for your things."
+
+The worst of it was, that their suggestions were so practical. Obviously
+it was our duty to at once take all precautions.
+
+I consequently took off my clothes, and removing the lid of the cistern,
+I was let down through a hole in the floor into the waters below. In my
+descent I re-opened the wounds in my hands, and it was in no very
+cheerful mood that I found myself in darkness, with water up to my
+shoulders. I moved cautiously about, trying to imagine our feelings if
+fate drove us to this chilly and conventional hiding-place while
+detectives were conducting a search for us above. Then I barked my foot
+on something hard, and stooping down through the water I picked up a
+large block of pumicestone, which was doubtless the forger's engraving
+die. Something scurried on an unseen ledge; a rat no doubt. I felt I had
+seen enough of the cistern. Groping my way back to the lid, my fingers
+touched a little thing that cracked under them, and instantly I felt a
+stinging pain. Whether it was a beetle or a sleepy wasp I did not stop
+to inquire.
+
+"Lemme get out," I bleated through the hole in the floor. . . . "Robin,"
+I said, when I was safe once more, "if ever we are driven down there, we
+must take something to counteract the evil spirits."
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+All that morning we passed in the pantry, eating and dozing by snatches.
+
+Morning merged into afternoon, the afternoon lengthened into evening,
+and no policeman came. We were safe.
+
+At nightfall, after sending Hyppolité as a scout up the stairs to see
+that the other lodgers were not about, we ascended to our room again,
+and settled down definitely.
+
+Our stay, we then thought, might last several weeks, so as to give us
+leisure to weigh the reliability of the various routes and guides that
+offered. There was no particular hurry. The longer we stayed, the more
+likely the Turks would be to relax such measures as they had taken for
+our recapture.
+
+But we had reckoned without our host: the host of vermin. They were
+worse in this room than in any other place I have seen in Turkey, not
+excepting the lowest dungeons of the military prison, where they breed
+by the billion. Their voracity and vehemence made a prolonged stay
+impossible. Except for the first sleep of two hours, when exhaustion had
+made us insensible, we never thereafter had more than a single hour of
+uninterrupted rest.
+
+Throughout the long and stifling nights of our stay, Robin and I lay in
+the stately double bed, wondering wearily how any man or woman alive
+could tolerate the creatures that crawled over its mahogany-posts and
+swarmed over its flowered damask. Every three-quarters of an hour, one
+or other of us used to light a candle, and add to the holocaust of
+creatures we had already slain.
+
+"What hunting?" I used to ask sleepily.
+
+"A couple of brace this time, and a cub I chopped in covert," Robin
+would say.
+
+"That makes twenty-two couple up to date--and the time is 12.35 a.m."
+
+Then at one o'clock it was Robin's turn to ask what sport I had had.
+
+"A sounder broke away under your pillow," I reported. "Six rideable boar
+and six squeakers."
+
+Ugh!
+
+Those first days of our liberty were a trying time. To the external
+irritation of insects were added the mental anxieties of our situation.
+What, for instance, would happen to the twins if we were caught in that
+house? And, again, was Thémistoclé faithful? Would he be tempted by the
+reward offered for our recapture? At times we were not quite certain. He
+used to talk very gloomily about the risks and the cost of life.
+
+"Everyone is starving," he used to say thoughtfully--"even the
+policemen go hungry for bribes. A friend of mine, a policeman, said to
+me the other day: 'For the love of Allah find somebody for me to arrest.
+Among all the guilty and the innocent in this town, surely you can find
+somebody that we could threaten to arrest? Then we would share the
+proceeds.'"
+
+"What did you say to that?" I asked.
+
+"I said," he answered thoughtfully, "that I would do my best."
+
+"But what sort of man would you arrest?" I asked.
+
+"Any sort of man. A drunkard perhaps, if I saw one, or a rich man, if I
+dared."
+
+"Rich men are apt to be dangerous," said I meaningly.
+
+"I know. But what can one do?" he asked, spreading out his hands. "One
+must live!"
+
+"And let live," said I, thinking suddenly of the bugs, and wondering
+what Thémistoclé thought of them.
+
+It was then that I noticed his method of combating the household pets.
+
+Previously I had observed that the ends of his pyjamas (we always talked
+at night) were provided with strong tapes, which were tied close to his
+ankles; but the object of this fastening only became apparent when I
+noticed the excited throngs of insects on his elastic-sided boots. They
+could not get higher. They were balked of their blood. If he ever felt
+any discomfort, he merely tightened the tapes.
+
+After a careful study of Thémistoclé's psychology (which was so full of
+outlooks new to me that I never achieved more than a glimpse into the
+pages of his past) I came to the conclusion that he was implicitly to be
+trusted. In his frail frame there burned a spirit of adventure and a
+courage that might "step from star to star." His soul had been born to
+live in a great man, only somehow it had made a mistake and taken a
+tenement instead of a manor-house to live in. . . .
+
+I think sunset and sunrise were the pleasantest hours in our new abode.
+It was possible then to draw back the blinds without any danger of being
+seen, and enjoy the cool of the evening and the magnificent view which
+our situation afforded. Our house, although it stood in a side street,
+commanded a prospect of the upper end of the Golden Horn, as well as a
+view of one of the most populous thoroughfares of the town.
+
+We used to sit and gaze at the twilit city, until the creeping darkness
+overtook us.
+
+If circulation be a test of a city's vitality, then Constantinople was
+certainly at a low ebb. The pedestrians seemed to get nowhere. They were
+hanging about, waiting for something to happen. The whole town was
+dead-tired, unspeakably bored of life as it had to be lived under the
+Young Turks. Constantinople was getting cross. . . . Cross, like someone
+who was tired of adulation from the wrong person. Some trick of sea and
+sun give her this human quality of sex. Anyone who has lived for long
+in her houses must feel her personality. She is the courtesan of
+conquerors, but inherent in her is some witchcraft, by which she weakens
+those who hold her, so that they die and are utterly exterminated, while
+she remains with her fadeless and fatal beauty, an Eastern Lorelei
+beside the Bosphorus. . . . She sapped the strength of the Roman Empire,
+she overthrew the dominion of the Greeks, and now, after a period of
+fretful wedlock, she was shaking herself free from the Turk.
+
+Something was going to happen soon. One felt it in the air.
+
+What happened to us, was that it became necessary to draw the blinds and
+light our candle, and search for the pestilence that crept by night.
+Presently our meal arrived, which was always a cheerful interlude, but
+it was as short as it was sweet, for courses were few, with famine
+prices prevailing. Afterwards we continued our hunting till dawn.
+
+At dawn, when the chill of morning had sent our sated enemies to sleep,
+there was another truce from trouble. We used to draw back the blinds
+again and sit at the window.
+
+I used to watch the pale sun on the horizon, fighting the mist-forms
+that clung heavily to earth and sea, and I felt that in the
+world-consciousness a similar contest swayed. The old ideas of
+government were being caught by a light that was pale now, but soon to
+grow luminous--a radiance that would dispel the night of war, and show
+us a new world, intangible yet, but dimly sensed.
+
+In the dim alleys and side streets below, where balconies overhung,
+shutting out the dawn, what a weight of woe there was! Famine and fire,
+twin angels of destruction that lurked in every by-way of the city, were
+waiting to take their toll. And the war went on for caged and free,
+while some starved and others made fortunes, and some became generals
+and others corpses. And the end of these things was vanity. _Vanitas
+vanitatum._
+
+The minaret of a mosque was directly opposite to me. Under sway of the
+sanctuary and the hour, the voice of the _muezzin_ spoke to me in all
+its sincerity and unity of purpose. God was everywhere, all-pervasive,
+all-unseen, invisible only because He was so manifest. Evil of the night
+and glory of the dawn made His picture, the world. With new eyes I saw
+now this city grey with sin, and fresh with the promise of another day.
+
+From the house of that stern and simple faith that is the creed of
+one-fifth of the world, there came a sense of kinship with all the
+suffering under the sky. Reverence came to me also, and that brotherhood
+which is the message of the Great Teachers since time began. These
+thoughts were round me, a silent company, as I looked Mecca-wards, to
+the place of prayer. Then the heralds of the dawn alighted on the
+minaret, and their wings were amethyst and saffron. The night was over,
+and the _muezzin's_ long, exultant call to worship died down with the
+increasing light.
+
+Another day had begun.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Not many days and nights did we tarry in Thémistoclé's house. Robin
+decided to try his luck by land. After various inquiries, he made
+arrangements with a Greek boy to board a melon-boat bound for Rodosto.
+His idea was to make that port, and thence work his way to Enos, where
+he hoped to be picked up by our patrol-boats. After many adventures and
+perils by land and sea, and a great deal of bad luck, he was caught at
+the town of Malgara. So ended a very gallant attempt, which ought to be
+set down in detail by him.
+
+I can only describe his appearance when he left. His disguise was a
+matter of great difficulty, for he is so tall and so Saxon that he
+always attracted notice in an Eastern crowd. An Arab ragamuffin seemed
+the rôle best suited to him, and he accordingly exchanged his
+comparatively respectable clothes for a greasy old coat and a pair of
+repellent trousers. With a tattered fez well back on his head, and all
+his visible skin blackened with burnt cork, he looked an unspeakable
+scoundrel. But he was too villainous. He would have been immediately
+arrested for his appearance alone. A touch of genius, however, completed
+his make-up. . . . In his hands he carried a poor little bowl of curds
+and half a cucumber, which completely altered his ferocious air by
+adding the requisite touch of pathos. The edible emblems of innocence he
+carried transformed him completely into a sort of male Miss Muffet.
+
+No detective could have found heart to inquire where he was going. He
+was enough to make anyone cry.
+
+He left in a frightful hurry, for his boat was due to catch a certain
+tide, but we drank a stirrup cup to his success, and parted with much
+sadness on my side, not until the old lady before mentioned had lit a
+candle before the ikon of Saint Nicholas. . . .
+
+I was very sorry to see him go, but I was quite convinced (wrongly, as
+events proved) that the best chance of success lay in going to Russia.
+
+The little Colonel of the Russian Guards had told us before we escaped
+that he was likely to be soon repatriated (for he was a person of
+influence in the Caucasus), and I felt sure that I could arrange to go
+as his servant, if no better scheme presented itself in the meanwhile.
+But there were many possibilities in the "city of disguises."
+
+During my stay with Thémistoclé I had been learning history, as it is
+never written, but as it is most strangely lived by a people on the
+brink of dissolution and disaster. As an escaped prisoner I thought that
+delay in Constantinople--somewhere clean, however--would not be time
+wasted if one was in touch with the politics of the time. If the
+Russian scheme failed, there were other openings, by earth and air and
+water.
+
+But the first thing to do was to find a place where I could lay my head
+without getting it bitten.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The good angel of prisoners came to my assistance at this critical
+juncture in my affairs.
+
+"You must be disguised as a girl," said she--"I will buy you a wig at
+once."
+
+"But what about my figure?" I asked, "and my feet . . .?"
+
+"Some clothes were left with me at the beginning of the war," she
+answered, "which will fit you with the help of a tailor. And as to your
+shoes, your own will pass muster, with new bows. No one has had any
+proper shoes for ages here. But you will want--well, lots of other
+things."
+
+And I certainly _did_ want a lot, before I looked at all presentable.
+After very careful shaving, I began to splash about confidently at my
+toilet table. There was Vesuvian black for the eyebrows, _bistre_ for
+the eyelashes, _poudre violette_, rouge, carmine--more powder--more
+rouge--at last I showed my satisfied face to Miss Whitaker, who gave a
+cry of horror, and flatly refused to be seen in my company.
+
+There was nothing for it but to wash my face and start again.
+
+This time I succeeded in making myself presentable, although a blue
+streak of whisker seemed always slightly visible through the powder. The
+wig, however, helped matters greatly, and I arranged some ringlets on my
+shaven cheeks.
+
+The dressing-up was quite exciting. Silk and lace and whalebone,
+especially a lot of lace in front, was the basis on which I built. The
+foundations took some time in laying, but when finished I found to my
+delight that the coat and skirt belonging to Miss Whitaker's friend
+fitted my figure perfectly.
+
+A few details, invisible to my eyes, were quickly corrected, and I think
+that when I finally emerged, with large hat at a becoming angle, I did
+credit to my instructress.
+
+Gloves I had always to wear, of course, and a veil was advisable,
+chiefly to tone down my blinding beauty to the eyes of passers-by. Do
+what I would, however, I could not hide a certain artificiality in my
+appearance, which was most unfair to Miss Whitaker, considering that I
+was her companion. But I behaved as well as I possibly could.
+
+[Illustration: The Author as a German Governess]
+
+I learned how to walk in a ladylike fashion, and how to powder my nose
+in an engaging manner. My arms and legs had to be kept under various
+restraints. A mincing gait was soon acquired, but I found sitting still
+more awkward. My knees evinced an almost ineradicable tendency to cross
+themselves or sprawl, while my gloved forearms, to the last, felt as
+unwieldy as a baboon's. But everything I could I learned assiduously
+and in dead earnest, down to managing my veil, and patting my curls
+nicely in front of a looking-glass. It was so frightfully important not
+to make a false step.
+
+My only excuse for going about with Miss Whitaker at all was the
+complete success of the rôle for which she had so skilfully prepared me.
+Never for a moment was there any suspicion of my identity.
+
+On one occasion, in the early days of my disguise, when we were
+sight-seeing at Eyoub, some Turkish ladies stopped to talk to us. I
+remained silent, of course, but I watched them narrowly and came to the
+conclusion that they saw nothing amiss. My eyes, incidentally, were as
+well painted as theirs. Now, if two charming and worldly-wise _hanoums_
+cannot detect a flaw in one's form or features, it is unlikely that any
+mere male could be cleverer than they.
+
+The mere males, alas! were enthralled by my appearance. Once or twice an
+embarrassing situation was narrowly averted. The road behind the Pera
+Palace Hotel is dark, and we used to ascend it in fear and trembling.
+But although we were followed sometimes, no one ever presumed to speak
+to us.
+
+Miss Whitaker had found me by now a delightful roof, near the house in
+which I took my meals, and this place was free from all life smaller
+than a rat. Here I was able to make my plans in peace, with no fear of
+treachery, for, so cleverly had Miss Whitaker arranged matters, no one
+knew I was not a woman.
+
+As Mademoiselle Josephine, an eccentric German governess, who suffered
+from consumption (and therefore spoke very low and huskily) I used to
+pass my nights _ŕ belle étoile_, after well-spent days in the docks or
+cafés, where my plans were maturing. The stars in their courses seemed
+to be on my side. No longer, as when a fretful prisoner, did I think
+their quiet shining was a reminder of man's minuteness in the schemes of
+God. I felt now that man could make his destiny. And when that destiny
+was shaped by hands such as those that helped me, the world was a
+beautiful place. Good angels were here on earth, at "our own
+clay-shuttered doors." . . .
+
+Two little girls, to whom I used to bring chocolates, used to come up in
+the evening and kiss my hand, wishing me good-night. They thought I was
+the most amusing governess they had ever met. Their mother, a kind old
+lady who offered me cough mixtures, must have thought me rather odd, but
+then she was prepared to make allowances for foreigners, especially in
+war-time. To have a reason for wishing to be inconspicuous was nothing
+unusual in those days, whether one was German, Jew, or Greek, or male or
+female.
+
+Of various opportunities that came my way, the most practical and
+attractive was that suggested by the Russian Colonel. His repatriation
+to the Caucasus was now only a matter of days. He had not only got his
+own passport, but also a passport for a servant. That servant was to be
+myself. In order to discuss plans, we found the safest rendezvous was
+the open-air café of the Petits Champs. This place was crowded with
+"fashionable" people, and although both he and Miss Whitaker were
+constantly shadowed by detectives there was nothing at all suspicious in
+their being seen at tea-time in the company of an elegantly dressed
+German lady.
+
+The German lady was obviously not as young as she tried to appear, but
+then there was nothing unusual about that. She was also rather _gauche_
+in her movements, but this again was not out of keeping with the part.
+
+"In a fortnight's time we will be having tea at Tiflis," the Russian
+Colonel used to say. "I will raise two regiments of cavalry and take
+them to kill the Bolsheviks. You shall be my adjutant."
+
+"With the greatest pleasure in the world, _mon Colonel_. But please do
+not speak so loud."
+
+"Ah, that _sacré_ detective. I had forgotten him. Soon we will not have
+to think of such things."
+
+"Yes, but at the present moment your own particular shadow is trying to
+listen to what you are saying," I remarked in low tones.
+
+At once the Colonel's voice assumed a softer note, and his green eyes
+began to melt with tenderness.
+
+"_Mais Josephine, ma petite, écoutes donc, je t'adore. . . ._ There,
+he's passed. Everything is ready. I have got you a Russian soldier's
+uniform. You have only to put this on, and follow me on board when I
+go."
+
+"And if someone asks me who I am?"
+
+"You are my Georgian servant. And you can only speak Georgian. Just say
+this----"
+
+There followed a tongue-twisting sentence, which I tried to memorise.
+
+Meanwhile the band played, and people passed, and inquisitive eyes were
+turned in our direction.
+
+"That's a spy who knows me," Miss Whitaker would say. "_Encore une
+tasse, mademoiselle? Non?_ I think we ought to be going."
+
+"We'll settle the final details to-morrow," I whispered.
+
+"Right! Remember to let your beard grow. I couldn't have a smooth-faced
+orderly."
+
+"_Eh bien, mille mercis, Colonel_," said I, giving him my hand.
+
+He held it a moment, bowing, and looking inexpressible things.
+
+"_Ah, Josephine. . . ._"
+
+"_A demain, alors!_"
+
+And with a simper I left my gallant and dapper cavalier to pay the
+bill.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  RECAPTURED
+
+
+At five o'clock one morning Mlle. Josephine received a staggering note
+from the Russian Colonel to say that he had had to leave at a moment's
+notice for the Caucasus, under a Turkish guard, and that there was no
+prospect at all of his taking his dear Josephine with him.
+
+Thus my plan had failed. It was not the Colonel's fault, but it was
+annoying all the same. I had wasted both time and money, provisions and
+opportunities, and now I had to begin all over again.
+
+I decided that I would not continue in my disguise as a girl. It was too
+nerve-racking to begin with; and also, as a girl, I could not go down
+myself to the docks and arrange matters at first hand. I felt I must do
+something for myself. During the month that had elapsed Robin had been
+recaptured, other officers had escaped, the whole course of the war was
+changing, and here was I still _embusqué_ in Constantinople.
+
+Something must be done, and, as usual, my good angel did it for
+me. . . . She bought me a small upturned moustache, spectacles,
+hair-dye, a second-hand suit, a stained white waistcoat which I
+ornamented with a large nickel gilt watch chain, a pair of old
+elastic-sided boots (price Ł7), an ebony cane with a silver top, and a
+bowler hat which I perched rakishly askew. I was a Hungarian mechanic,
+out of a job. I had lost my place at the munition factory near San
+Stefano. But I was not down-hearted. My nails were oily and my
+antecedents doubtful, but I drank my beer and smoked my cigars and
+looked on life brightly through my spectacles.
+
+I did not avoid the Boche--in fact, I frequently drank beer with him.
+The non-Latin races are not inquisitive as a rule. They cared little
+whether I was Swiss or Dutch or Hungarian, and I frequently claimed all
+three nationalities. They did not even think it odd when, on one
+occasion, I said that I had been born in Scandinavia and later that I
+was a naturalised Hungarian, and later again (when a Jewish gentleman
+with military boots joined us, whom I recognised to be a Government
+informer, paid to pick up information) that I was really of Russian
+parentage and that I had a passport to this effect (which I showed to
+the company present) signed by Djevad Bey, the military commandant of
+Constantinople, permitting me to proceed to Russia and ordering that
+every facility should be given to me at the custom-house.
+
+This forged passport was a source of perplexity to me at the time, and
+later it was to be the cause of great discomfort. I had bought it for
+ten pounds from the gentleman whose pumicestone engraving die reposed
+at the bottom of the cistern. It was an ornate affair, duly stamped, and
+sealed, and signed with a Turkish flourish. But I could not bring myself
+to believe that it would get me through the passport office, the
+_douane_, and the medical station at the entrance to the Bosphorus. Some
+hitch would certainly have occurred.
+
+However, it impressed the company in the café. People generally take one
+at one's own valuation, and the few secret agents to whom I spoke
+obviously considered that I was not a likely person to be blackmailed.
+With the Greeks I was certainly popular. The seedy-smart polyglot youth
+who was so liberal with his cigars (which were rather a rarity then) and
+so fond of talking politics and drinking beer was a _persona grata_ in
+the circles he frequented. We talked much of revolution.
+
+"We will crucify the Young Turks," said a Greek to me one day, "and then
+eat them in little bits. We will----" His expressive hands suddenly
+paused in mid-gesture, and his mouth dropped open, but only for an
+instant. He had seen a detective enter. "We will continue to preserve
+our dignity and remain calm whatever happens," he concluded neatly.
+
+But calm the Greeks certainly were not.
+
+In the cellar of a German hotel in Pera the Greek proprietor displayed
+one night a collection of rusty swords and old revolvers which were the
+nucleus of the New Age of brotherly love, when the streets were to run
+with Turkish blood, and the Cross replace the Crescent in San Sophia. I
+was privileged to be present at this conclave of desperadoes. After
+swearing each other to eternal secrecy we sampled some of the contents
+of our host's cellar, and talked very big about what we were going to
+do. But our host, beyond dancing a hornpipe and declaring that he was
+going to murder everybody in the hotel (after they had paid their
+bills), propounded no very definite scheme.
+
+Out of this atmosphere of melodrama one emerged into the sombre, silent
+streets and went rather furtively home, feeling that there was something
+to be said for the Turks after all. But I need hardly say that no
+influential Greeks had a share in these proceedings: they were always on
+the side of moderation. One had been a fool to consort with fools.
+
+Behind the lattices of the harems it was said that Enver Pasha's day was
+done. The new Sultan had thrown him out of the palace, neck and crop.
+There was to be an inquiry into the means by which he had acquired huge
+farms round Constantinople--farms which were supposed to be purchased
+from the proceeds of a corner in milk that had killed many children. The
+Custodians of the Harem (and in Turkey these tall flat-chested
+individuals have positions of great power; the Chief of the White
+Custodians, for instance, is one of the high dignitaries of the Empire,
+and ranks with a Lord Chamberlain) had long been intriguing against the
+Committee and especially against the German element with Enver at its
+head. . . . The Sultan was high in popular favour, and a dramatic
+suicide in the main street of Pera, which lifted a corner of the curtain
+hiding the unrest behind the scenes at the Imperial Palace, became a
+nine days' wonder, and gave rise to extraordinary rumours. A Turkish
+officer in full uniform had been seen running for dear life down the
+Grand Rue de Pera, pursued by policemen. The officer took refuge in the
+Turkish club, but he was refused asylum there. The policemen crowded
+into the entrance hall to arrest him, while the fugitive dashed upstairs
+to the card-room. Finding, however, that he could not avoid arrest, he
+threw himself out of the window, and was instantly killed on the
+pavement below. For some time, the corpse, dressed in the uniform of the
+Yildiz Guards, blocked the traffic of the city.
+
+A few days later a British air-raid gave the Constantinopolitans
+something new to think about. It was a stifling night, and I was dozing
+and listening to the mosquitoes that buzzed round me, when their drone
+seemed to grow louder and louder. I lay quite still, thinking that
+another raid would be too good to be true. But presently there was no
+doubt about it. Invisible, but very audible, the British squadron was
+sailing overhead. I jumped up and at that moment the Turks put up their
+barrage. Bang! Boom! Whizz! Kk--kk--kk! All the little voices of
+civilisation were speaking.
+
+Greeks crowded into the streets, and clapped their hands when the crash
+and rumble of a bomb was heard in the Turkish quarter of Stamboul.
+
+"The Sultan is going to make peace," they told me. "He has refused to
+gird on the Sword of Othman until the Committee of Union and Progress
+give an account of their funds."
+
+"Hurrah for the English!" shouted others, quite undismayed by the
+shrapnel and falling pieces of shell.
+
+Here are some chance remarks, actually heard during air raids.
+
+"Ah! Here is the revolution at last!" said a Turkish officer in a
+chemist's shop in the Grand Rue de Pera, thinking the firing meant the
+downfall of Enver Pasha and his gang.
+
+"Bread costs four shillings a two-pound loaf," said an Armenian in the
+suburb of Chichli--"and as often as not there is a stone or half a mouse
+thrown into the four shillings' worth, for luck. May this gang of
+swindlers perish!"
+
+"Allah! send the English soon," wailed a Turkish widow in a hovel in
+Stamboul, where she was living with her five starving children. "We are
+being killed by inches now; it would be better to be killed quickly by
+bombs. The English cannot be worse than Enver."
+
+This, indeed, was the general opinion in Constantinople. Few of the
+population, outside the high officials, bore us any grudge. The thieving
+of the Young Turks was on as vast a scale as their ambition. From needy
+adventurers they had become the prosperous potentates of an Empire. No
+country, surely, has ever been the prey of such desperate and determined
+men.
+
+The air raids were one of the first causes of their weakening hold on
+the people. The moral effect of these demonstrations was incalculable,
+coming as it did at a time when the Sultan was supposed to be in favour
+of peace.
+
+Peace, indeed, was the only faint hope of salvation that remained to the
+very poor. Milk had almost disappeared from the open market, and for
+some time past children had been exposed in the street, their mothers
+being unable to support them any longer.
+
+Each night, when I passed the Petits Champs, I saw a row of starving
+children, poor little living protests of humanity against the barbarisms
+of war and the cruelty of profiteers, huddled on the pavement, mute,
+uncomplaining, too weak to even ask for alms.
+
+And Bedri Bey, sometime Prefect of Police at Constantinople, when
+appealed to, said: "_Bah! Les pauvres, qu'ils crčvent._"
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Although politics were interesting enough, escape was my first
+preoccupation. It was necessary to approach the harbour officials with
+caution, and they, on their side, although ready enough to help with
+suggestions, seemed inclined to shelve all the actual work on to a
+person or persons unknown, who remained in the background. It was very
+difficult to get at the principals.
+
+One of the chief agents of escape, however, I met one day in the Grand
+Rue de Pera. He was a most remarkable man. Intrigue was the breath of
+his nostrils, and although he had made thousands of pounds by helping
+rich refugees out of the country, he was really more interested in
+politics than pelf. He laid the groundwork of such knowledge as I
+acquired of Constantinople.
+
+Incidentally, in the course of our conversation, a squad of Russian
+officer prisoners passed, accompanied by two sentries whom I knew quite
+well. So confident did I feel of not being recognised that I said a few
+words to one of the Russians, while their escort glanced at me with
+faces perfectly blank. They had not the vaguest idea who I was.
+
+To get away from Constantinople, the escape merchant told me, was a
+matter of passing the custom house. Formerly this had been easy, but now
+every ship was searched from stem to stern and from deck to keelson.
+Also every skipper was a Mohammedan. All Christians had been recently
+deprived of their positions.
+
+Still, Mohammedans are not an unbribable people, and something might
+possibly be done for me. In fact, that very day he had learnt of a
+certain Lazz shipmaster, who was going over to the Caucasus in his own
+boat, and who would be prepared to take a few passengers for a
+consideration.
+
+Later in the same day I heard that two other officers, who had escaped
+about a week before (by bolting under a train in Haidar Pasha railway
+station), were already in touch with this Lazz. I went to see them early
+the following morning and we agreed to charter the boat between us, so
+as to reduce expenses.
+
+My two friends were living in the house of one Theodore, a Greek waiter
+at a restaurant in Sirkedji, who believed that they, as well as myself,
+were Germans.
+
+The Lazz, who came to visit us, was absolutely astounded when we
+proclaimed ourselves as British officers: he had been under the
+impression that we were some sort of Turkish subject. However, all
+passengers were grist to his mill, and British officers who talked
+glibly of gold payments were not people to be neglected. After haggling
+about terms, we made an appointment for the next day, and parted with
+some cordiality.
+
+On the morrow, punctual to our appointments, the Lazz and I again
+arrived at Theodore's house to confer further with my two friends.
+
+As it was a very hot afternoon, I took off my coat and my false
+moustache, before plunging into the details of our departure. It was
+evident that the Lazz was in a hurry to be off. His cargo was complete,
+he said. He had only to take in petrol for his motor before leaving on
+the following day. There remained the question of money, and after much
+argument we settled to pay him five hundred pounds on arrival at the
+port of Poti in the Caucasus, and one hundred pounds advance for fuel
+immediately. He was to provide the disguises necessary for us to pass
+the customs at the Bosphorus. We were each of us to don a black dress
+and a black veil and to sit in a row in his cabin, refusing to move or
+speak if interrogated. Muslim ladies, he assured us, had frequently
+refused to undergo any scrutiny whatever at the customs, and provided
+they were vouched for by some responsible person on board, the gallant
+excisemen were ready to let them pass. As his very own wives, said the
+Lazz, no harm could possibly come to us, provided of course we remained
+sitting, and silent, throughout the inspection.
+
+This seemed a very satisfactory scheme, for obviously whatever risks we
+ran, our friend the Lazz would run them too.
+
+By evening our pact was complete. We handed over a hundred pounds, and
+the Lazz promised faithfully that he would have the boat ready and our
+disguises prepared by nightfall on the following day, when we would sail
+for Russia.
+
+Hardly had the money changed hands before I noticed a suspicious-looking
+individual in the street below. Presently he was joined by another
+detective, whom I recognised.
+
+Things looked ugly.
+
+We took the Lazz cautiously to the window.
+
+"Do you know anything about those men?" we asked.
+
+He turned deathly pale, but swore he had never seen them before. I do
+not think he had. His fear was genuine.
+
+"Let me get out! Let me get out!" he said, making a bolt for the door.
+
+And he went. There was no use in trying to stop him.
+
+One of my friends and I now went downstairs, while the third member of
+our party stayed behind to hide a few odds and ends of gear, in case the
+house was searched.
+
+We waited downstairs, making light of our fears, and fighting a
+premonition of disaster.
+
+Presently there was a loud tapping on the door. Even if it were the
+police, I thought, our disguises would carry us through. Then I noticed
+that my friend was in shirt-sleeves. I put on my spectacles and tried to
+stick on my moustache again, but the gum from it had gone.
+
+The rapping at the door became louder and louder, and presently it was
+opened by a flustered female.
+
+In trooped six detectives, including the man I had recognised, who was
+apparently their leader.
+
+"There are some British officers hiding here," he said fiercely to the
+woman; "show me where they are."
+
+While this scene was passing in the entrance-hall, we were behind the
+door of the pantry.
+
+A detective came in and caught my friend. Meanwhile two others were
+pommelling the unfortunate woman to make her say where we were. She kept
+pleading that she knew nothing about any British officers.
+
+Another instant, and I should have been found. So I came out from behind
+the pantry door, and crossed the entrance hall.
+
+In the doorway stood a burly policeman, who said "_Yok, yok_," when I
+attempted to pass him.
+
+Had I had the requisite nerve I believe I could have bluffed this man.
+Some phrase with _schweinhund_ in it would probably have got me past.
+But I hesitated, and was lost.
+
+My hand flew to my breast pocket, where the forged passport lay, and my
+false moustache.
+
+"Seize that man and search him," said the head detective, looking over
+the banisters. Then he went upstairs, dragging the woman with him.
+
+My arms were instantly caught from behind, while a seedy-looking youth,
+who was probably a pick-pocket in his spare time, ran his fingers over
+my clothes. My wad of money, watch, compass, passport, moustache,
+everything was put into a small canvas bag, and I was then taken to the
+opposite corner of the room to that in which my friend sat, and told
+not to move under pain of death. A levelled revolver emphasised the
+injunction.
+
+[Illustration: The Author as a Hungarian Mechanic]
+
+Presently there were cries of women heard from the attic, then there was
+a loud crash, and I knew that the third member of our party had fallen
+through the trapdoor leading to the roof.
+
+That was the last of my freedom for the time. Thus suddenly my five
+weeks' scheming was ended.
+
+Each of us was taken charge of by two policemen, who linked their arms
+in ours. Presently the order to march was given, and a dismal
+procession, consisting of two weeping women, a seedy-smart individual in
+a bowler hat, two youths in slippers and shirt-sleeves, and a Greek
+waiter, could be seen wending their way to the Central Gaol of
+Stamboul.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+Before leaving, we had protested strongly against the treatment of the
+women in the house.
+
+"But they are Turkish subjects," said the detectives.
+
+"Anyway, they are women," we protested.
+
+But this had little effect. Theodore and his unfortunate family were
+marched off behind us to the Central Gaol. I think, however, that our
+protest was not quite in vain, for it gave the women courage. When I
+last saw them, before being taken to the Chief of Police, they had dried
+their tears. Eventually they were released, but not, alas! until they
+had endured much suffering.
+
+The Chief of Police congratulated us on being safe once more in Turkish
+hands.
+
+"Yes, we are comfortably back in prison," I said with a faint smile,
+"and therefore there is surely no harm in giving us back the personal
+trifles that the detectives took from us."
+
+"I cannot give you your papers," he said. "There is a forged passport
+here, amongst other things."
+
+"Very well, do as you like about that," I said, shrugging my shoulders,
+"but surely my empty pocket-book and my watch might be returned."
+
+To this he agreed, whereupon he handed me--
+
+(_a_) My pocket-book, containing five pounds hidden in the lining.
+
+(_b_) My watch, and a compass, which he mistook for another timepiece.
+
+(_c_) My false moustache, which had been captured on my person.
+
+I was in an agony of anxiety about this moustache. Had the police
+inquired at the only two hairdressers' where such things were made, they
+would have found that Miss Whitaker had ordered it for me only ten days
+before. But now it was safely in my possession again. I had the only
+connecting link of evidence that might incriminate Miss Whitaker in my
+trouser pocket, and was tearing it to shreds as I talked to the Chief of
+Police.
+
+The interview passed on a note of felicitation, until the very end.
+After praising the smart way his men had surrounded the house, and
+receiving his congratulations on our escapes, just as if the whole thing
+was a game, we said that there was one criticism we had to make on
+police methods, and that was their treatment of women.
+
+"They are Turkish subjects," snapped the Chief of Police, suddenly
+showing his teeth.
+
+"They are women," we retorted, "and they are innocent. If they are
+maltreated----"
+
+"I know how to manage my affairs," he said with a gasp of annoyance.
+
+"Certainly. But if they are maltreated you will be responsible after the
+war."
+
+To this he made no reply.
+
+We were removed without further ado, and after being photographed and
+measured in the most approved fashion for criminals, we were taken up
+long flights of stairs, and across a roof, to the quarters for prisoners
+awaiting trial. Here we were allotted separate cells, where we were to
+pass the next few days in strict isolation.
+
+To my amazement (for I knew something of Turkish prisons from a previous
+experience, not here recorded) these cells were scrupulously clean. A
+bed, a table, and a chair were in each apartment, all very firm and
+foursquare, as if designed to withstand any access of fury or despair on
+the prisoner's part. There was electric light in the ceiling, covered
+with wire netting. Walls and woodwork were of a neutral colour. The
+windows, which were barred, had a convenient arrangement for regulating
+the ventilation. The heavy door, which admitted no sound, was provided
+with a sliding hatch, which could be opened by the warders at will for
+purposes of investigation. Everything was hideously efficient.
+
+Turkey is a country of surprises, but I was not prepared for this. I
+would have preferred something more picturesque. One's mind, after the
+testing climax of recapture, craves for new doses of excitement.
+
+The brain of a criminal, after he has been apprehended, must be a
+turmoil of thought. He curses his stupidity, or his luck, or his
+associates. He longs to explain and defend himself. Instead of this, he
+is left in silence in a drab room, with no company but his thoughts.
+
+My own thoughts were most unpleasant. I had failed miserably and
+innocent people were suffering as the result.
+
+After five weeks of effort I was farther than ever from escape. Worse
+than all, Miss Whitaker was in danger. Never again shall I pass such
+dismal hours. I see myself now, seated on that solid chair with head on
+arms, bent over that efficient table. A prisoner's heart must soon turn
+to stone.
+
+But although our surroundings were inhuman, one of our gaolers had a
+generous heart. He opened the slot in my door merely to say he was sorry
+about it all, and that the women were all right. It is little actions
+such as these that so often light the darkest hours of life. The man was
+a European Turk.
+
+It was urgently necessary to communicate with my fellow-prisoners, in
+order to arrange to tell the same story. My friend next door solved the
+problem by bawling up through his barred window at the top of his voice
+that he would leave a note for me in the wash-place.
+
+"Right you are!" I howled in answer, and instantly the slot of my door
+opened, and I had to explain that I was singing.
+
+Already, interest was beginning to creep back into one's life. I found
+the note in the wash-place, read it secretly, thought over my answer,
+and transcribed the message on to a cigarette paper. Having no writing
+material, I used the end of a match dipped into an ink prepared from
+tobacco juice and ash. By these simple means we established a regular
+means of communication and before forty-eight hours of our strict
+seclusion had elapsed we were all three in possession of a complete,
+circumstantial, and fictitious account of our adventures prior to
+capture.
+
+When not engaged on reminiscences, I was generally pacing my cell, or
+trying to invent some new form of exercise to keep myself fit. But at
+times energy failed and one felt inclined to gnash one's teeth at the
+futility of it all.
+
+One day, when I was feeling inclined to gnash my teeth, the slot in my
+door was furtively withdrawn, and, instead of a gaoler, a very comely
+vision appeared at the observation hatch. A pair of laughing black eyes
+were looking in on me. She wrinkled her nose, and laughed. I jumped up,
+thinking I was dreaming, and hoping that the dream would continue. At
+the same moment something dropped on to my floor. Then the trap door was
+softly shut to.
+
+I found a tiny stump of lead pencil. That was proof of the reality of my
+vision.
+
+Countless excuses to leave my cell, and voluminous correspondence with
+the pencil's aid eventually enabled me to find out that she was an
+Armenian girl, awaiting trial, who took a deep interest in us. At great
+risk to herself, she had provided the three of us with writing
+instruments. Except for a brief glimpse, and a mumbled word, I was never
+able to thank her, however, owing to circumstances beyond our control.
+
+On the fourth day we were transferred to the Military Prison in the
+Square of the Seraskerat.
+
+As usual in Turkey, our move was sudden and unexpected. That morning, on
+complaining at mid-day that I had as yet received no food, I was told
+that _inshallah_--if God pleased--it would arrive in due course.
+
+Instead of a belated breakfast, however, a _posse_ of policemen arrived,
+and we started on our journeys again: my friends still in their
+shirt-sleeves and slippers, and myself still in my bowler hat, although
+I did not now wear it so rakishly.
+
+But we were fairly cheery. We had learnt (no matter how) that the
+females of Theodore's family would soon be released, and that Theodore
+himself, although still in duress, would not suffer any extreme fate.
+Also, it was by now fairly obvious that Miss Whitaker would not be
+apprehended, as sufficient evidence was not obtainable against her. She
+had covered her tracks too well. All things considered, there was no
+cause for depression.
+
+But waiting is hungry work. That afternoon still saw us, fretful and
+unfed, waiting outside the office of Djevad Bey, the Military
+Commandant of Constantinople.
+
+At last I was taken into an ornate room, where I had my first talk with
+this redoubtable individual, who was popularly supposed to be the
+hangman of the Young Turks. Anyone less like an executioner I have never
+seen. He was plump, well-dressed, with humorous grey eyes. He wore long,
+rather well-fitting boots, and smoked his cigarettes from a long amber
+holder. He also had a long amber moustache, which was being trained
+Kaiser-wise.
+
+I stood before him at attention.
+
+"About this forged passport," he began--"do gentlemen in your country
+forge each other's signatures?"
+
+"It is not usual," I admitted.
+
+"Then you, as an English gentleman, surely did not counterfeit my
+writing?"
+
+"Oh no! I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."
+
+"Then how do you account for this passport being in your possession?"
+
+I remained silent.
+
+"Who forged it?" he insisted.
+
+"May I look?" said I. "Is that really your signature?"
+
+"It is indeed. With it you could easily have got out of the country."
+
+"What an idiot I was not to use it!" I said with quite unfeigned
+annoyance.
+
+"You were!" he laughed--"they would have passed you straight through the
+Customs on seeing this."
+
+I felt very faint at this moment, and staggered against the table. But I
+recovered after an instant. I quite forget his next few remarks, but I
+know that I committed myself to a story that I had bought the passport
+from a man in a restaurant whom I could not now recognise.
+
+"But where have you been living all these weeks?" he asked.
+
+"I was living in the ruins near the Fatih mosque," I said glibly--"and I
+used to lunch and dine at various cafés in the city, a different one
+every day. It was in one of these places that I bought the passport."
+
+Djevad Bey considered this statement for a moment. There was a nasty
+look in his eye when he spoke again.
+
+"I shall never rest until I know who it is who can forge my signature so
+well," he said--"and until I know, I am afraid you will be very
+uncomfortable, for by law you are in the position of a common
+malefactor."
+
+"By law I am in the position of a prisoner of war," I answered--"and as
+such, I am liable to a fortnight's simple imprisonment, for attempting
+to escape. The Turkish Government signed this agreement only a few
+months ago with the British representatives at Berne."
+
+"A man who forges another's name is not an officer, but a forger," he
+said meaningly.
+
+"Say what you like, and do what you like," I answered--"I am in your
+power. But one thing I ask, and that is, that if you punish me, you
+should liberate the innocent Theodore and his family. True, we were
+found in their house, but----"
+
+"I cannot believe what you say," said Djevad Bey thoughtfully.
+
+There was a pause. Then:
+
+"Come, as man to man, won't you tell me who forged that passport?"
+
+"You have just called me a liar," said I. "That ends the matter."
+
+And with an all-is-over-between-us air I left the room, feeling dizzy
+and uncomfortable.
+
+It was then four o'clock in the afternoon, and I had not yet eaten. I
+did not feel at all amused at the prospect of the Military Prison.
+
+I was taken downstairs into the darkness, on entering this inferno of
+the damned of Enver Pasha. There were cries and shouts down there, and
+men scrambling for food, and other men who looked like wild animals,
+behind bars. A swarthy custodian took my name, and I then proceeded,
+down a long corridor, until my escort reached an iron portal such as
+Dante imagined long ago.
+
+_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. . . ._ The gates had clanged
+behind me, and I was in a long, low room below ground level, airless,
+ill-lit, filthy with tomato skins and bits of bread. Well-fed rats were
+scurrying amongst the garbage, and badly-fed prisoners were pacing the
+room forlornly, or twiddling their thumbs, or scratching themselves, or
+gnawing crusts of bread.
+
+They gathered round me, clamouring for news and cigarettes. In less than
+no time they had picked my pockets. They had no more morals than
+monkeys. Poor devils! who could blame them, living as they did down
+there, where no rumours are heard of the outside world, except the cries
+of beaten men and the dull sound of wood on flesh?
+
+"What are you in for?" they asked me.
+
+"Forgery," said I, not to be outdone by any desperado present.
+
+One man, however, confessed to murder, having cut a small boy's throat a
+few months before. With him I could not compete. But the most of us were
+fraudulent contractors, spies, petty swindlers and the like. Our morals,
+as I have said, were practically _nil_. Yet I noticed that a Jew lived
+quite apart, and was shunned by everybody. By trade he was a brigand,
+but this was no slur on his character as a criminal: the failing that
+had led to ostracism was that he pilfered the other prisoners' tomatoes.
+That was really beyond a joke. . . .
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+One of my newly found friends took me to a bed, consisting of two planks
+on an iron frame, which he said I could have for my very, very own. He
+also gave me a piece of bread and some water. On beginning to eat I at
+once realised how hungry I was, and inquired how I should obtain further
+nourishment.
+
+"Luxuries are very difficult to obtain," he said; "how much money have
+you got?"
+
+"Twenty-five piastres,[9]" I answered.
+
+He pulled a long face.
+
+"That won't go far. But every evening at eight a boy comes round with
+the scraps left over from the Officers' Restaurant. Otherwise you will
+live on bread and tomatoes."
+
+"What about bedding?" I asked, to change the subject.
+
+"Bedding!" he said, looking at me as if I was a perfect idiot. "Do you
+mean to say you have come here without any bedding?"
+
+I admitted I had, but felt too exhausted to explain.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+One was utterly lost in that dungeon. Even when the war ended, would one
+be found? I doubted it. Yet as I would naturally never reveal the
+forger's name, it seemed unlikely that I would get out. . . . Then I
+thought of my companions. I imagined them happily together, in some
+place where one could see the sky. . . . As for me, I might languish
+down here for ever. Obviously something should be done.
+
+But what? I rose (rather hastily, for on looking between the planks of
+my bed, I noticed that the crack was entirely filled with battalions of
+board beasts in line, waiting for a night attack), and began to pace
+our narrow and nasty apartment. A group of prisoners were cooking some
+pitiful mess by the window. Four others played poker with a very greasy
+pack. One was twiddling his thumbs very fast, and I suddenly recollected
+that he had been twiddling his thumbs very fast half an hour ago, when I
+had first seen him. The lonely Jew was removing lice from the seams of
+his coat, and throwing his quarry airily about the room.
+
+Then I noticed that besides ourselves, there were other prisoners even
+more unfortunate. There had been so much to see in my new surroundings
+that I had not noticed the people in chains. . . . One side of our room
+opened out on to some half-dozen cubicles, each of which contained a
+prisoner in chains. These cells had no light or ventilation. They
+measured six feet in length by four in breadth. In solitude and
+obscurity, fettered by wrist and ankle to shackles that weighed a
+hundredweight, human beings lived there--and are still living for aught
+I know--for months and even years, until death released them. These men
+were ravenous and verminous, but they had by no means lost their hope
+and faith. I shall never hear the hymn--
+
+  "Thy rule, O Christ, begin,
+   Break with Thine iron rod
+   The tyrannies of sin . . ."
+
+without remembering that an Armenian lad said those words to me, lying
+in chains in one of these cells. With another prisoner, a Greek, who
+had endured eleven months of this torture, I also had some speech.
+
+"Yes, the war will be over soon," he said. "My God, how good this
+cigarette of yours tastes! I haven't touched tobacco for a month. But be
+careful. The sentries must not see you speaking to me."
+
+"Yes, the chains were bad at first," he continued when the sentry's back
+was turned, "but one gets used to anything in time. And I have had time
+enough. It takes a lot to kill a healthy man. Before I came in here I
+used to be strong and well. I used to ride two hours every day, on my
+own horses. Now my horses have gone to feed the Turkish Army and I can
+hardly drag my chains as far as the water-tap. But God is great. . . ."
+
+God is great! _Allahu akbar!_
+
+I determined to get away from that dungeon at all costs, if for no other
+reason than because I had to survive to write about it.
+
+I went to the big gate, and tried to bluff the sentry to let me go to
+see the Commandant. But a clean face and a full stomach are practically
+necessary to a _débonnaire_ appearance. When one is scrubby and starved
+it is almost impossible to succeed in "wangling." I stared at the sentry
+through my eyeglass, and I offered him my twenty-five piastres as if I
+had plenty more _baksheesh_ to give to a good boy, but I utterly and
+dismally failed to impress him.
+
+"_Yok, yok, yok_," he said, looking at me as one might look at an
+orang-outang that has
+
+  +-------------------------------+
+  |  DO NOT IRRITATE THIS ANIMAL  |
+  +-------------------------------+
+
+written over its cage.
+
+I gibbered in impotent rage, and then went and put my head under a tap.
+
+A little later, while I was drying my head with my handkerchief, I saw
+some barbers come to the big gate. They stood there, clapping and
+clacking their strops. Instantly, my fellow-prisoners rushed to the gate
+as if they had heard the beating of the wings of some angel of
+deliverance. This was apparently the occasion of their weekly shave,
+when egress to the corridor was permitted, the barbers naturally not
+wishing to go inside our loathsome room.
+
+Taking this tide in the affairs of men at the flood, I found it led on
+to fortune. I was in the corridor with six other prisoners, and a barber
+confronted me with a razor in his hand. He whetted his steel
+expectantly, but I would have none of him, and seized a passing official
+by the arm.
+
+He was a dog-collar gentleman.
+
+A dog-collar gentleman, I must explain, is Authority Incarnate. On his
+swelling chest he wears a crescent tablet of brass, with the one word
+_Quanun_ inscribed thereon. _Quanun_ means "law," and the wearer of this
+badge is responsible for public decorum of every kind. If a Turkish
+officer be seen drinking alcohol in uniform, or playing cards, or
+flirting, or talking disrespectfully of the Germans, or indulging in any
+other prohibited amusement, he is instantly arrested by the dog-collar
+gentleman, and brought to prison. In his official capacity, the
+dog-collar gentleman is one of the most important personages in Turkey:
+policeman, pussfoot and prude in one.
+
+"There is some mistake," I said excitedly. "I am a British officer, and
+have been put in a room with criminals."
+
+"You a British officer?" said the dog-collar man incredulously.
+
+"A captain of cavalry," said I, slipping him the twenty-five piastre
+note.
+
+"_Pekke, Effendim_," he answered. "Very good, sir, I will see what can
+be done."
+
+I had burnt my boats now.
+
+About ten minutes later, just as I was flatly refusing to either be
+shaved or to return through the gate, a sergeant-major and a squad of
+soldiers arrived and bore me off to the Prison Commandant.
+
+Here I caught sight of my two companions, and was able to fling them a
+few words through the "Yok, yok" of the sentries. They also had been
+separated, and put amongst criminals. Their lot had been no different to
+mine.
+
+"A slight mistake has occurred," said the Prison Commandant to me, "but
+now you shall have one of the best rooms in the prison. Only I am
+afraid you will be alone there, until after your trial."
+
+Of course I did not believe him, but I was glad that I was to be alone.
+
+I was taken to a room on the upper floor, furnished with a bed and
+blanket, and with a window opening on to a corridor, where people were
+always passing. The Commandant had spoken the truth. It was quite a good
+room, as prison apartments go, and the traffic of the corridor amused
+me.
+
+At nine o'clock that night I was able to get a dish of haricot beans, my
+first meal of the day.
+
+Then I settled down to a month of solitary confinement.
+
+I think I may claim to write of this torture, which exists not only in
+Turkey but through the prisons of the civilised world, with some expert
+knowledge. I use the word "torture" because it is nothing less. Solitary
+confinement is a punishment as barbarous and as senseless as the
+thumbscrew or the rack: more so indeed, for it is better to kill the
+body than to maim the mind. The spirit of man is more than his poor
+flesh; the war has reminded us of that. And if it has also reminded us
+that our prison systems are archaic, so much the better for the world.
+
+At times, in gaol, a tide of pity rose in me for all life created that
+is caged by man.
+
+Take a felon at one end of the scale, and a canary at the other. The
+felon is imprisoned for twenty years. For twenty years, less some small
+remission for good conduct, an abnormal brain lives in abnormal
+surroundings, where hope dies, and ideals fail. He has sinned against
+society, and therefore society murders his mind. Corporal and capital
+punishment, I have come to believe, are saner than the cruelties,
+immeasurable by "the world's coarse thumb and finger," suffered by the
+mind of man in solitary confinement or the common gaol. The
+sentimentalist who shudders at the cat and gallows forgets the worse,
+slow, hidden horrors that pass unseen in the felon's brain. Perhaps the
+sentimentalist does not realise them. Perhaps also the old lady who
+keeps a canary does not realise the feelings of her pet. She may think
+she is protecting it from the birds and beasts outside. But I feel now
+that I know what the canary feels. . . . However, it is difficult to
+argue about questions involving imagination.
+
+I lived on hope, chiefly, during the days that followed. With nothing to
+read, no cutting instrument of any sort, no washing arrangements, and no
+one to speak to, the time passed hideously. I used to gaze at my watch
+sometimes, appalled at the slow passage of time. The second-hand had a
+horrible fascination for me. It simply crawled round its dial and each
+instant, between the jerks of the little hand, the precious moments of
+my youth were passing, beyond recall. Madness lay that way. If I had
+been a real criminal, I wondered, would I have repented? Unquestionably
+the answer was, "No!" Solitary confinement would have made me a
+permanent enemy of society.
+
+There were no smiles and soap in that Military Prison, no scissors, no
+sanitation. There was nothing human or clean about it. Nothing but
+destruction will rid it of its vermin, or scour it of its taint of
+disease and death.
+
+Perhaps the lack of scissors was the amenity of life whose absence I
+most deplored. Try to do without a cutting instrument for a month, and
+you will realise why it was that some sort of cutting edge was the first
+need of primitive man and remains a prime necessity to-day.
+
+However, as a matter of fact, I did not remain a whole month without a
+cutting edge. Before a fortnight had elapsed I had bettered my position
+in many ways. I had secured a knife (which I stole from the restaurant),
+a wash-basin (sent from the Embassy), and pencil and paper from a
+friendly clerk. With these writing instruments I used to correspond
+voluminously with the other British prisoners, by various privy methods.
+
+I had a regular routine for my days now. Early mornings were devoted to
+walking briskly up and down my room in various gaits--the sailor's roll,
+for instance, and the Napoleonic stride, and the deportment of various
+of my acquaintances. During this time I avoided thinking, but generally
+imagined some incident in which I took a distinguished part. In the
+forenoon I played games, such as throwing my soap to the ceiling and
+catching it again, or juggling with cigarettes, both lighted and
+unlighted. The afternoon generally passed in sleep, but the evening and
+nights were bad. It was then that the second hand of my watch began to
+exert its fascination. The electric light bulb, however, could
+occasionally be tampered with, and on these occasions there was always
+the hope that the sentries would get a shock in putting it right. Also I
+found amusement in my watch chain, which I made into an absorbing
+puzzle.
+
+But, curiously enough, I found it impossible to write anything, except
+lengthy letters.
+
+A real prisoner in a well-constituted prison does not enjoy his days any
+more than I did. On the other hand, he knows how long his sentence is
+going to last, whereas in my case I was confined during Djevad Bey's
+pleasure, or the duration of the war, and each day brought me nearer
+nothing--except insanity.
+
+One evening, however, an Imperial Son-in-law entered my room, and lit my
+life with a certain interest. His father, who was a Court official, had
+betrothed him to a princess, and he had consequently assumed the title
+of Damad, or Son-in-law. This youth had had a remarkable career. While
+still a guileless lad, scarcely broke from the harem, he had used his
+revolver so injudiciously that he had seriously damaged one of the
+Imperial apartments, besides killing the elderly Colonel at whom he was
+aiming. Enver Pasha had of course himself a weakness for this sort of
+thing, but still, to save appearances, the Damad had to be punished. He
+was therefore condemned to three months' confinement in the Military
+Prison. Although nominally in residence there, he used, however, to
+leave prison every Friday to attend the Sultan's Selamlik, and only
+return on Monday night. Moreover, he not only thoroughly amused himself
+during his protracted week-ends, he also squeezed every bit of pleasure
+possible out of his prison days. Life was a lemon, which he sucked with
+grace. He was free to wander where he wished in the prison, and to eat
+and drink what he liked. The best of everything was good enough for the
+Damad. Grapes came for him from the Sultan's garden, and a faithful
+negro slave was always at his heels.
+
+The Damad had rather charming manners. He knocked politely before
+entering my cell.
+
+"Excuse my interrupting," he said, "but----"
+
+"You are not interrupting me at all," I answered, getting up from my
+bed. "I do wish you would stop and talk. Have a cigarette? I haven't
+talked to anyone for a fortnight."
+
+"I am so sorry, but I daren't talk to you. That is a pleasure to come. I
+wanted to borrow something, that's all. And, I say, will you allow me to
+offer you one of my cigarettes--they're the Sultan's brand, you know.
+Better take the box. Well, I saw you with an eyeglass through the window
+in the passage. Will you lend it me to appear at the next Selamlik?"
+
+I was delighted, and said so. To my sorrow, the Damad instantly took his
+departure.
+
+"Smuggle me in something to read," I said, as he left with profuse
+apologies for his hurry.
+
+He nodded, and his long left eyelash flickered.
+
+Next day his little nigger boy, when the sentry's back was turned,
+popped about twenty leaflets into my window. I seized them avidly, and
+found that they were the astounding adventures of Nat Pinkerton in
+French. Never have my eyes rested so gleefully on a printed page. I
+consumed them cautiously, else I should have gorged myself with
+excitement at a single sitting. Like an epicure, I made them last, by
+always breaking off at the critical juncture of the great detective's
+affairs. From that moment my life flowed in more agreeable channels.
+
+"Devouring time, blunt though the lion's paws." . . . I suddenly
+understood Shakespeare's meaning afresh. Time had dulled the clawing of
+regret.
+
+I had failed to escape, it is true, but there was always hope. Things
+were getting better. The women had been released. Thémistoclé only
+awaited a formal trial. My own condition had improved. I had been moved
+from my solitary confinement, just when I had secured a Bible, and a
+large tin of Keating's, wherewith to combat the devils of captivity. But
+any change is better than none at all, I thought. The mortal hunger for
+companionship is strong, and my new room, besides containing an officer,
+also enjoyed an excellent and varied view.
+
+After a few days' experience of my new room-mate, however, who was a
+Bulgarian Bolshevik, I began to pine for solitude again. A more
+unmitigated Tishbite I have never seen, but fortunately he was smaller
+than I. When I found him washing his feet in my basin one night, I smote
+him, hip and thigh.
+
+That Bulgarian has coloured my whole view of the Balkans. The less said
+about him, the better.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+One day about thirty British officers arrived from the camp at Yuzgad,
+whence they had escaped and been recaptured on the occasion when
+Commander Cochrane and his gallant band of seven marched four hundred
+and fifty miles to freedom. All the party who arrived in the Military
+Prison were in uniform, and in excellent spirits. They were like a
+breath of fresh air in that sordid place. On being put into three rooms,
+these thirty brave men and true at once demanded beds to sleep on. In
+due time the beds arrived, in the usual condition of beds in that place.
+They might have been so many Stilton cheeses. Our thirty prisoners,
+despite the protest of the guards, carried out their couches into the
+passage, and lit two Primus stoves. Over these stoves they proceeded to
+pass the component parts of each bed, so that its occupants were utterly
+exterminated.
+
+Imagine the scene. A dismal corridor, a flaming stove, Turkish sentries
+protesting with Hercules in khaki, cleansing the Augean stable. . . .
+But protests were useless. The smell of burnt bugs mingled with the
+other contaminations of the prison. Our officers had done in little what
+civilisation will one day do at large throughout that land.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+A British officer, going to the feeding place, looked into a window
+which gave on to my room. But I was kept strictly apart from my fellows,
+and the sentry consequently tried to drag the officer away.
+
+"Leave me alone, you son of Belial!" said he. "Isn't a window meant to
+look through?"
+
+Windows in that prison were certainly not meant to look through.
+
+From my new eyrie I had a composite view of startling contrasts. Down
+below, some soldiers were living in a verandah, behind wooden bars.
+Anything more animal than their life it would be impossible to conceive.
+Every afternoon at three o'clock a parade of handcuffed men were
+marshalled two by two, and then pushed into these dens. Beyond them lay
+the city of Stamboul with its clustered cupolas and nine-trellised
+alley-ways. And beyond the city were the blue waters of the Marmora.
+
+Then there was the window in the passage through which the British
+officer had observed me. This gave me a view of the rank and fashion of
+the prison, so that I knew who was being tried, who received visitors,
+and so on.
+
+And directly opposite me, in another face of the building, was yet
+another window, with curtains drawn. That was the window of the Hall of
+Justice. Directly under my perch, but rather too far to jump, were some
+telegraph lines which might possibly have provided a means of escape.
+Sentries used to watch me carefully, whenever I looked at these
+telegraph lines. I was considered a dangerous, indeed a desperate
+character, and my every movement was regarded with apprehension. Not
+only was no one (except now the Bulgarian) allowed to speak to me, but I
+was not even permitted to look at anything, or anyone, for long, without
+being bidden to desist. Whatever I did, in fact, I was told not to do.
+
+Eventually I made a scene.
+
+The immediate cause of the row was that I had a glimpse of a sitting in
+the Hall of Justice. I had often wondered what passed there, for at
+times faint screams used to hint of the infamies that passed behind
+those curtains.
+
+One day I saw.
+
+The Hall of Justice is a fine room, with a lordly sweep of view over the
+city and the sea. Why anyone chose such a situation as a torture chamber
+I do not know. But there it was. There was something dramatic about the
+beautiful prospect and the bestial people who sat with their backs
+turned to it, interrogating the Armenians.
+
+  "Every prospect pleases and only man is vile."
+
+Very vile were the two Turkish officers, judges I suppose, who sat
+smoking cigarettes, while an old Armenian woman and her son stood before
+them to be tried. What passed I could not hear, but evidently her
+answers were not satisfactory, for presently the policeman who stood
+behind her kicked her violently, so that her head jerked back and her
+arms flung forward, and she was sent tottering towards the judges'
+table. Then the policeman took a stick as thick as a man's wrist, and
+began to beat her over the head and shoulders. Her son meanwhile had
+fallen on his knees and was crawling about the room, dragging his
+chains, and supplicating first the judges and then the policeman. He was
+imploring them, no doubt, to have pity on his mother's age and weakness.
+
+She fell down in a faint. The policeman kicked her in the face, and then
+prodded her with a stick until she rose.
+
+I wish the people who are ready to "let the Turk manage his own country"
+could have seen that savage pantomime.
+
+I tried to get out to stop it, but was driven back with bayonets.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Djevad Bey, the Military Commandant of Constantinople, with a
+resplendent retinue, arrived one day to inspect us. With his long
+cigarette-holder, and long shiny boots, he swaggered round, followed by
+_ormulu_ staff officers and diligent clerks and pompous gentlemen in
+dog-collars. Everywhere around him was dirt, disease, destitution, and
+despair. But Djevad Bey in his shiny boots "cared for none of these
+things." He was himself, with his medals and moustaches, and that was
+enough.
+
+"What more do you want, _effendi_?" he asked me after I had made a few
+casual complaints (for it was useless to take him seriously). "You have
+one of the most beautiful views in Europe from the garden."
+
+"But I am not allowed into the garden."
+
+"Have a little patience, _mon cher_," said he. "It is rather crowded
+with older prisoners now. But in a little time perhaps, when I have
+discovered the name of that forger . . ."
+
+And with a condescending smile he passed on between ranks of sentries
+standing stiffly at attention, to inspect another portion of his
+miserable menagerie.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Ah, Djevad, _mon cher_, those days seem distant now! You and your
+popinjays have passed. . . .
+
+[Footnote 9: Five shillings.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  OUR SECOND ESCAPE
+
+
+The ghosts of the prisoners of the Tower, or of the Bastille, could they
+revisit earth, would undoubtedly have found themselves more at home in
+the Military Prison, Constantinople, than anywhere else in the world.
+The dark ages were still a matter of actuality in the dark dungeons of
+Constantinople in 1918. To be tried, for instance, was there considered
+something very up-to-date. Most prisoners were not tried, until their
+sentence was nearly over, when they were formally liberated.
+
+After a month of solitary confinement, and a week of confinement with
+the Bulgarian, which was an even worse travail of the spirit, I received
+the joyful news that the preliminaries for my court-martial were almost
+complete.
+
+I attended this first sitting with the thrill of a debutante going to a
+ball. I determined to make up arrears of talk. And I did. I began at the
+beginning of my life, sketched my education, and came by easy stages to
+my career as an officer in the Indian Cavalry. The clerk who recorded my
+evidence wrote for two hours without pause or intermission, but it is
+worthy of record that at the end of that time we had only reached the
+point where an officer of the Psamattia fire brigade, hearing, as I
+thought, a suspicious movement on the roof of the house across the
+street, kept a stern and steadfast gaze in our direction, while we
+crouched trembling under cover of the parapet. At this point the
+proceedings were adjourned.
+
+But the Court had let fall a useful piece of information. Robin was back
+in prison, but was being kept even more secret and secluded than I.
+
+However, love laughs at locksmiths, and it takes more than a Turkish
+sentry to defeat a persevering prisoner. We sighted each other in
+passages, we met in wash-places, we flipped notes to each other in bits
+of bread, or sent them by a third party concealed in cigarettes. By such
+means, I learnt Robin's remarkable story. . . . After being caught at
+Malgara, ten days after his first escape, he was taken back to the
+Central Gaol, where he was treated as a Turkish deserter and given
+nothing but black bread to eat. He thereupon went on hunger strike for
+three days, and alarmed the Turks by nearly dying in their hands. Later
+he was allowed to purchase a liberal diet, including even wine and
+cigars, which he declared were necessary to his health, but his
+constitution being enfeebled by privation, he developed alarming
+swellings over his face and scalp, which were probably due to some
+noxious ingredient of the hair-dye he had used. In this condition he
+was sent to hospital, and from hospital he escaped again. A Greek
+patient was his accomplice.
+
+Giving this man ten pounds to buy a disguise with, he made an
+appointment with him for nine o'clock outside the German Embassy (!) and
+then set out on his adventures dressed in a white night-shirt. How he
+eluded the sentries is a mystery to me, although I inspected the place
+after the armistice. Patients were then saying (Turks, who are sometimes
+sportsmen, among them): "Here is where a British officer escaped. Thus
+and thus did he climb--past the sentries--along that buttress--down into
+the street hard by the guard-house!". . . . He arrived punctually at
+nine o'clock at the German Embassy, in his night-shirt. But the Greek
+accomplice was not there. He was at that moment drinking and dicing with
+Robin's money. For half an hour Robin waited for him by a tree in the
+shadows of a side street leading to the sea. The few people who passed
+him stared hard, and then moved nervously across to the other pavement.
+They thought he was a madman.
+
+Robin, I think, felt he was a madman too. In his present situation and
+dress, detection was only a matter of time. However, chance might be
+kind and send him a disguise. Cold and disconsolate, he ascended the
+main road that led to the top of the Grand Rue de Pera, and taking his
+way through the traffic, dipped down into the ruins beyond. The saint
+who protects prisoners must have guided that tall white figure, that
+paddled across the busy town. . . . And more, once he was hiding in the
+ruins, the saint must have sent along the small boy who passed close to
+him in that lonely spot of cypresses and desolation. All-unknowing of
+the fate that awaited him behind the angle of the wall, the small boy
+strode sturdily along, thinking perhaps of the nice bran-bread and
+synthetic coffee that awaited him for supper. Robin pounced out of the
+shadow, and seized him by the scruff of the neck. . . . The victim
+instantly began to blubber.
+
+"Give me all your clothes," said Robin.
+
+"Who are you?" sobbed the little boy.
+
+"Brigand," said Robin shortly.
+
+This answer had the desired effect. The youth dried his tears, and
+divested himself of his apparel, which Robin immediately put on. The
+boots were much too small to wear and were returned. Still, the brigand
+was so satisfied with his clothes that he gave the small boy four pounds
+with a magnanimous gesture. Then he set out to seek his fortune, wearing
+a tiny fezz, and a coat whose sleeves reached half-way down his forearm.
+For four days he dodged about the city, never more than a few hours at
+one place, until, just when his strength and his funds were exhausted,
+he found a house to give him shelter. From here he made a plan to
+escape, but was recaught through treachery at the docks, and taken back
+to the Military Prison. Only an Ali Baba could do justice to these
+experiences. Alas! the best books of adventure are just those which are
+never written.
+
+Anyway we were together again, two desperadoes in dungeon, "apart but
+not afar."
+
+The Damad's little nigger boy often contributed to our schemes for
+communication. This lad, who was in training for the position of keeper
+of the harem, and consequently belonged to the species that rises to
+eminence in Turkey, was a remarkable child. He did exactly what he liked
+and no one dared interfere with the little Lord Chamberlain _in posse_.
+He had an uncanny brain and uncanny strength, and I can quite understand
+the reliance which Turkish Pashas are wont to repose in these servants.
+I relied on him myself at times, and was never disappointed.
+
+The arrival of a neutral Red Cross delegate, at about this time, did
+much to secure us better treatment. For over five weeks now I had not
+breathed fresh air, but directly the Red Cross delegate arrived I was
+allowed to go to the bath, escorted by two dog-collar gentlemen with
+revolvers and two sentries with side arms. While glad to feel I was
+employing so many of the Turkish Army while at my ablutions, I could not
+but deplore their anxiety on my behalf.
+
+"No officer has ever succeeded in escaping from this wonderful gaol of
+yours," I said to the Prison Commandant, who (in contrast to Djevad) was
+quite a good fellow in his way "and I don't suppose anyone ever will.
+Why therefore go to the trouble of guarding us so closely? It would be
+a very graceful act on your part if you allowed us to go occasionally
+into the garden."
+
+"Yarin, inshallah," murmured the Commandant, meaning, "To-morrow, please
+God."
+
+And to-morrow, strange to say, actually arrived in about a week's time.
+
+Perhaps a bomb raid hastened matters, by stimulating the Commandant's
+desire to do graceful acts before the war was over.
+
+One of the bombs of this raid dropped in the school playground just
+outside the Seraskerat Square, and shattered all the windows in my
+passage. Fortunately all the children were away, it being Friday. No one
+was killed by that bomb, but a large handsome Turkish officer prisoner
+standing beside me in the passage, when some panes of glass beside us
+burst, threw himself on the floor and refused to rise again, declaring
+he was killed. A full ten minutes he lay, with his moustaches in the
+dust, surrounded by sentries. In the confusion that ensued Robin
+cleverly slipped over to me and we had a very useful chat.
+
+The first and most vital thing to do, we decided, was to get into
+Constantinople, in order to learn how the situation really stood, and
+make our plans for escaping, so that in the event of our success we
+should be in possession of knowledge useful to the Allies.
+
+Having settled this, we returned to our respective cells, where I
+witnessed a scene that, by contrast with the behaviour of the nervous
+Turkish officer, reminded me of the "patient deep disdain" that the
+East will always feel for the marvels of our age of steel. Our machines
+are things of a day, but the ancient needs remain. The bomb that had
+dropped in the playground had wrecked a large tree that stood in its
+centre, and hardly had its smoke cleared away before an elderly peasant
+appeared with a donkey and started collecting twigs and splinters for
+firewood. Slowly and stolidly, under that barrage-riven sky, the old man
+continued gathering the aftermath of the raid, before the raid was
+finished. Empires might crumble to the dust: he would cook his dinner
+with the pieces.
+
+This bombing business "cleared the air" for us greatly, and another
+little incident clinched matters.
+
+An officious sentry, who had received the usual orders about treating
+Robin with especial severity, so far exceeded his instructions as to
+slap Robin in the face when he was merely standing at the door of his
+room. Robin instantly knocked him down with a hook on the point of the
+jaw that would have sent a prizefighter to sleep, let alone a _posta_.
+There was a click of rifles and a glitter of bayonets. Sergeants were
+whistled for. Swords and spurs rang down the corridor. The Commandant
+arrived.
+
+What seemed an awkward situation for Robin at first now turned greatly
+to his advantage. He demanded an apology from the Minister of War, and
+although he did not receive this, our treatment immediately improved.
+The Turkish sentry was so clearly in the wrong that the Commandant felt
+he should do something to placate us.
+
+One day, Robin and I were told that we would be allowed into
+Constantinople to shop, provided we gave our parole not to escape while
+in the town.
+
+This we immediately decided to do, and wrote a promise stating that
+while we could give no permanent engagement about our behaviour while
+guarded in prison, if we were allowed out into the town we bound
+ourselves to return faithfully to our quarters at a fixed time. Next
+day, accordingly, we dressed in the quaint apologies for clothes in our
+possession, and sallied out, blinking in the sunlight of the square.
+
+Imagine our surprise when we found an escort of ten armed men, who were
+to accompany us to see that we kept our word. Highly incensed, we
+returned directly to the Commandant's office, followed by our retinue.
+At first the Commandant did not understand the nature of the insult he
+had offered to us, but eventually he agreed that a squad of soldiers was
+unnecessary to enforce an Englishman's promise, and he promised to send
+us out again on the following day, more suitably attended.
+
+This time there were only two dog-collar gentlemen to accompany us, and
+although we were later joined by a third, who, I think, smelt beer and
+beef in the offing, we considered that this number of attendants was not
+unsuitable to our importance. (For a long time after escape, indeed, I
+was always expecting to find a sentry at my elbow. They were very
+convenient for carrying parcels, and during this excursion the minions
+of the law actually carried back to prison our escaping gear, wrapped in
+harmless-looking packages.) Rope, fezzes, and maps were the articles
+chiefly required, and these we purchased without much difficulty in
+restaurants where we were known. Robin and I were adepts at this sort of
+thing by now. One of us had only to go over to our escort's table, and
+standing over them, inquire whether they preferred black beer or yellow:
+meanwhile the other would be "wangling" the waiter. Besides material
+accessories we also required certain moral support. Was it worth while
+to escape? Would the Bulgarians attack Constantinople? What was the
+_morale_ of the Tchatchaldja garrison? . . . . All this and much more we
+learnt from Miss Whitaker, whom we met (just by chance, do you think?)
+at tea at the Petits Champs.
+
+We returned from our excursion highly satisfied with our prospects. That
+evening we thanked the Commandant warmly for our delightful day, and
+asked one favour more, namely that we should be allowed out regularly
+into the garden, in order to get the exercise necessary to our health.
+An hour's walk every day would greatly relieve the tension of captivity.
+Surely, we said, the Commandant did not intend to keep us caged like
+wild beasts, with a minimum of air and exercise?
+
+Permission was granted, with the proviso that we should not talk to
+other prisoners. Of all black sheep we were the blackest ones.
+
+So we walked in the garden, and discussed plans of escape. We now had
+fezzes, rope, and plenty of money. On the other hand, there were so many
+sentries everywhere, and so many doors and barriers to get through, that
+the thing seemed impossible at first.
+
+Bribery was not to be thought of. Any attempt in this direction would
+have sent us through the portals of the damned again, to await the end
+of the war in chains.
+
+Only in the garden was there the slightest chance of success. Our
+chance, however, lay, as before, in the element of the unexpected.
+
+On the far side of the garden from the prison were some iron railings,
+which overlooked a drop of from one hundred to two hundred feet, to a
+street below. These railings were spaced at just about the width of a
+man's head. We tested them at various points while apparently engaged in
+looking at the view, and made a note of the gaps most suitable to
+squeeze through. No one appeared to think it likely we would try to
+escape over a precipice. The six sentries in the garden therefore, whose
+sole duty it was to watch us, generally devoted their attention to
+seeing we did not talk to the Greek clerks who came into the restaurant
+to get their dinner of an evening. Beyond occasionally saying the magic
+word "_Yok_," they allowed us to do much what we liked at the other side
+of the garden, where our interests, they thought, could only be of an
+innocent nature.
+
+At first our idea was to get through the railings and slide down a rope
+into the street, but there were practical difficulties about this.
+Thirty fathoms of rope are impossible to conceal on one's person.
+Besides, we thought of a better plan.
+
+Having got through the railings, we would climb along outside them, past
+the garden, and along the wall of a printing-house, where their support
+still continued, until we reached the main square of the Seraskerat.
+Here we would squeeze back through the railings (for the drop was still
+too difficult to negotiate) and proceed as follows: We would stroll to
+the centre of the square, light cigars, and then suddenly altering our
+demeanour, hurry back to the staff garage where the military motor-cars
+were kept. The sentry on guard would certainly think we were chauffeurs.
+
+With a guttural curse or two, we would start up a car, and drive
+directly to the Bulgarian frontier, or Dedeagatch, as the situation
+dictated. If anyone attempted to stop us on the way, we had only to say,
+"_Kreuzhimmel donnerwetter_," and open out the throttle. The plan was
+charming in its simplicity and _kolossal_ in conception. We already
+imagined ourselves arriving with full details of the Constantinople
+defences, in a big Mercédčs car. The plan was complete. We had only to
+do it!
+
+Opportunity came one twilight evening, when we two were alone in the
+garden, with the six sentries, all rather sleepy, and the Damad, who had
+just returned from a hectic week-end up the Bosphorus. He was full of
+stories and news which we did not want to hear. For a time he bored us
+to tears talking of the war, but at last conversation flagged, and we
+bade him a cordial good-night, making an appointment to see him again
+next day, which we trusted we would not be in a position to keep.
+
+Then we edged to the far side of the garden, where the railings were.
+The six sleepy sentries were watching the stream of people going into
+the restaurant near the entrance gate. They paid no attention to us, and
+looked--rather sadly, I thought--at the Greeks who were coming in to
+have a square meal, a thing that they themselves could only dream of.
+
+Feeling that the moment was too good to be lost, and yet somehow too
+good to be true, we stood by the railings, with our heads half through.
+
+"Come on," said Robin cheerily.
+
+I put my head through, and my flinching flesh followed a moment later. I
+hung over the drop and looked and listened tensely for any stir in the
+garden, expecting every moment to hear the clamour of sentries and the
+drone of bullets. But all was quiet. One sentry lit another's cigarette.
+A third was playing with a kitten. The others had their backs turned.
+
+We clambered along, and reached the printing-house. We were out of
+sight of the sentries now, and the way seemed clear, across a patch of
+ivy, to a gap which would give us entrance to the main square. Once we
+had gained its comparative freedom, success, I felt, was certain.
+
+But my hope was short-lived. The railings on the wall of the
+printing-house led past an open window, which we had not been able to
+see from the garden. At this window three Turks were sitting. They were
+officials of the printing-house no doubt, and were now engaged in
+discussing short drinks and the prospect of the Bosphorus. Had we
+interposed our bodies between them and the view, we would have been in a
+very unpleasant position. With one finger they could have pushed us down
+to the street a hundred feet below, or else detained us where we were,
+to wait like wingless flies until soldiers came to drag us back.
+
+It was a horrid anti-climax, but we decided to go back. There was no
+alternative.
+
+That return journey was quite hideous, for at any moment before we
+reached our gap a sentry might have seen us. And even if they had missed
+us at fifty yards (and we were a sitting shot against the sunset) we
+would have looked absolutely foolish and been abjectly helpless.
+
+All went well, however. We squeezed back through the railings, and found
+ourselves in the prison garden again. Our attempt had failed. I felt as
+if someone had suddenly flattened me out with a rolling pin. But Robin
+was quite undismayed.
+
+"Our luck is in," he said--"else we would have been spotted against
+those railings just now. Look, it is a full moon, like the last time we
+escaped. I bet we succeed to-night."
+
+"I won't take your money," I said, hugely heartened, however.
+
+Four of our sentries were smoking sadly, and looking into the
+restaurant, as boys look into a cake-shop. The fifth was standing by the
+gold-fish pond. The sixth leaned against the railings, about eighty
+yards away from us, looking out towards Galata Bridge.
+
+After hurriedly dusting ourselves, we walked straight past him. He
+turned and glanced at his watch, and then at us.
+
+"Just five minutes more," we urged--"we haven't had nearly enough
+exercise yet."
+
+And we continued walking round the garden, breathlessly discussing
+plans.
+
+The sentry nodded and sighed, then turned again to contemplate the
+Golden Horn.
+
+Our one remaining chance was to walk straight out of the gate near the
+restaurant, into the main square. In moments of intense stress one can
+sometimes grasp the psychology of a situation in a flash. We saw into
+the minds of the sentries, I believe. They were bored and unsuspecting.
+A sort of prevision came to us that we would be mistaken for Greek
+employees of the Ministry, and could stroll unquestioned through the
+gate, if we acted instantly.
+
+It was getting dark now. We slipped into a patch of shadow, threw away
+our hats, and taking out the fezzes which we always carried concealed
+under our waistcoats, we put them on our heads. Then we strolled on.
+
+To understand our feelings, it must be remembered that no officer has
+ever before succeeded in escaping from this ancient prison. The Turks
+prided themselves on the fact. Recently, a political suspect had made a
+desperate dash for liberty by the same entrance as we now approached,
+but he had been caught before he reached the outer square. Good men had
+tried--but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And we _knew_, by
+sheer faith, that we would not be stopped.
+
+We walked very slowly now, stopping sometimes to gesticulate, after the
+manner of the Mediterranean peoples. What we said I have no idea, but I
+think I spoke _staccato_ Italian, while Robin answered in Arabic
+imprecations. Near the gate I remember saying to him passionately in
+English: "For God's sake turn your trousers down," for to one's
+sensitive mind such an oddity of dress was certain to spell detection.
+This was idiotic, but my nerves were on edge.
+
+Mingling with the Greeks who were coming out of the restaurant, we came
+at a very, very leisurely pace to the sentry-guarded gate. Everyone has
+a pass of course, both to enter and to leave this gate, but season
+ticket holders, so to speak, are rarely asked to produce their
+credentials.
+
+[Illustration: THE SQUARE OF THE SERASKERAT, CONSTANTINOPLE]
+
+We came level with the sentries at the gate. One of them took a step
+forward, as if to ask Robin a question. Then he looked at us again, and
+changed his mind. I have a sort of idea that my white waistcoat and
+ornamental watch chain saved the situation. No one with such belongings
+could fail to be a personage of clerkly habit.
+
+In that instant, however, faith had almost faltered, and the temptation
+to quicken one's pace had been almost irresistible. To bolt into the
+comparative freedom of the main square was now quite feasible, but we
+had to remember that once there, our difficulties were only half over.
+Every gate was guarded: the same high railings as we had already
+negotiated formed its perimeter, and there was a battalion of soldiers
+in the square itself. Therefore until we were out of the Seraskerat, we
+had to proceed with caution.
+
+Lethargically and nonchalantly we drew away from the restaurant.
+Although time was now a factor of importance (for at any moment the
+sentries in the garden might miss us), we dared not hurry our steps.
+
+"There are no cars about. Are we going into the garage?" I murmured
+doubtfully to Robin.
+
+At that moment an individual came up behind us, who settled the question
+out of hand. He was a Turkish officer. After passing us, he turned round
+to stare. We returned his scrutiny with careful composure, but it was
+quite obvious that he did not like the look of us. Yet our appearance
+was none of his business: he hesitated a moment and then decided to do
+exactly what one might do oneself if one saw a suspicious-looking
+individual in a public place: he went and told a policeman. We saw him
+hurrying to the main gate, where he called out the sergeant of the
+guard. We, meanwhile, were slinking diagonally across the square, as if
+bound for the side gate. To go to the garage now, as if approaching it
+from the Ministry of War, was impossible, as we were being watched. We
+whispered together, making new plans.
+
+It was almost past twilight, but the electric light over the main gate
+showed us the Turkish officer in confabulation with the sergeant of the
+guard. No doubt he was saying that our passports should be scrutinised
+before we were allowed to pass. The sergeant saluted as the officer
+left, and then stood in the circle of light, a burly and menacing
+figure, peering into the gathering darkness.
+
+We had now reached the middle of the Seraskerat and saw that the side
+gate was shut, and sentry-guarded. There was also a sentry in the
+adjacent shed. The main gate was impossible of access. So also was the
+garage. Our only chance lay in going forward.
+
+We went on, past the shed, until we reached some small trees by the side
+of the outer railings. We tried to put our heads through, but owing to a
+slight difference of spacing, we found this could not be done. We would
+have to climb over them.
+
+A couple of people were crossing the square. The sergeant stood blinking
+at the entrance. Else all was quiet.
+
+The railings were only some twelve foot high, so they did not form a
+serious obstacle, but on their other side there was a drop of ten feet,
+into a crowded street. That someone would raise an alarm seemed very
+probable.
+
+From the top of the railings I looked back to the prison where I had
+passed the last two months, and then forward to the street.
+
+Two little girls stood hand in hand, gaping up at me. A street hawker
+glanced in my direction. Except for these, no passer-by appeared to
+notice us.
+
+I dropped in a heap on the pavement. Next moment Robin landed beside me.
+
+We were free once more, this time not to be recaught.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The two little girls clapped their hands with glee when they saw us
+drop. As to the street hawker, I daresay he thought we were robbers, and
+as such, people not to be interfered with. The other passers-by merely
+edged away from us. No one, in Constantinople, will involve himself in
+any civil commotion if he can avoid it. Whether the disturbance be a
+fire or theft, the procedure is the same. If your neighbour is being
+robbed, you look the other way. If your house is being burnt, you bribe
+the fire brigade not to come near it, for it they do, they will
+assuredly loot everything that the flames do not consume. Hence the
+sight of two wild men dropping into a crowded street stirred no civic
+conscience. No one asked who we were.
+
+We crossed the tramway lines unmolested, and dived into a narrow street
+leading down the hill. Then we ran and ran and ran.
+
+That our escape would be instantly reported we did not doubt. That
+Galata Bridge would be watched and all our old haunts also seemed
+certain. The care with which we had been guarded showed that the Turks
+set a value on keeping us out of harm's way. At large in the city we
+would be factors of unrest.
+
+Avoiding main streets, we toiled on and on, through dark by-ways where
+the moonlight did not come, until we reached the old bridge across the
+Golden Horn. Here we decided to separate for the time, so that if one of
+us was caught by the toll-keepers, the other could still make good his
+escape.
+
+But the toll-keepers took their tribute of a stamp without demur. They
+knew nothing of British prisoners.
+
+Crossing, we turned right-handed, passing behind the American
+Ambassador's yacht _Scorpion_, at her berth near the Turkish Admiralty,
+and then went up into the European quarter. In Pera we knew a score of
+houses, between us, that would be glad to give us lodging, and it only
+remained to choose the most convenient.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+It is late at night, some days before the Armistice. I am in the gardens
+of the British Embassy, with a certain Colonel, an escaped prisoner of
+war like myself, who is in close touch with the political situation. We
+had come here, in disguise, to be out of the turmoil of the town.
+
+Outside, in the unquiet streets, men talk of revolution. Gangs of
+soldiers are under arms for twenty-four hours at a stretch. Machine guns
+are posted everywhere. The docks are an armed camp. Detectives and
+informers, the prison and the press-gang are at their old work. All is
+still dark in Constantinople; but we, fugitives at present, and meeting
+by stealth, speak of the day so soon to come when the barren flagstaff
+on the roof of the Embassy will carry the Union Jack.
+
+Below us, as we walk on the terrace, lies the Golden Horn, silver in the
+starlight, and across its waters the city of Stamboul stands dim,
+forlorn, and lovely. The slip of moon that rides over San Sofia seems
+symbol of the waning of misery and intolerance. Soon that sickle will
+disappear, and when the moon of the Moslems rises again and looks
+through the garden where we talk, she will see all round it a happier
+city. . . . Let us hope so, anyway.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Of the maze of plot and counterplot in the city, of the death-throes of
+the old régime, and of our own small part in the history of that time,
+this record of moods and misadventures is not the place to write. My
+life as a prisoner was finished: my brief career as a minor diplomat,
+keeping his finger on the feverish pulse of Turkish politics, had only
+just begun, and the story of those crowded weeks would fill a volume.
+
+Up to the last moment, the Government, in the person of Taalat Pasha,
+hoped to hold the real, if not the ostensible, reins of power. Until the
+flight of the Union and Progress triumvirate, the average Turk affected
+a certain lightheartedness about his country's losses. True, huge
+territories were lost to the Ottoman revenue, but on the other hand they
+had gained the Caucasus. So long as there was taxable territory, what
+did it matter whence the tribute came?
+
+One night, when my newspaper work permitted, I visited a friend of
+Taalat Pasha, without disclosing my identity.
+
+"Nobody but Taalat can possibly manage Turkey," he told me--"and the
+English, if they come, will be well advised to deal with him."
+
+"It is not the English only," I suggested modestly, "but the whole
+world-set-free, that is coming to Constantinople."
+
+"Then the world must deal with Taalat. His party has all the money, and
+all the brains and energy as well."
+
+"Everything except imagination," I replied.
+
+But I did not myself imagine that only thirty-six hours later Taalat,
+the fat telegraphist whom Fate caught in her toils, and Enver, with his
+peacock-grace and peacock-wits, and Djemal, with cruelty stamped on him
+like the brand of Cain, would pass disguised, and in darkness, and in
+fear of death, through the city they had ruled as kings.
+
+Neither did I imagine that in another fortnight the streets of Pera
+would be decked with banners, and the capital of the Turks a playground
+for the peoples against whom they had lately been at war. Nor did I know
+that I should soon be listening to the strains of "Rule Britannia," at
+the Pera Palace Hotel, while an enthusiastic crowd showered confetti on
+the bald head of the Colonel who had just arrived as the first British
+representative. Nor did I know that I should telephone to the papers to
+stop their press, while I motored down with the first interview from our
+delegate. Nor, again, could I realise that the pomp of the Prussians
+would be so suddenly replaced by pipes and walking-sticks and dogs. Nor
+did I even dream that the fifty-sixty horse-power Mercédčs car in which
+General Liman von Sanders was still racing through the streets would
+soon be my property, bought and paid for in gold, complete with all
+accessories, including even the chauffeur's diary, and that I should
+garage it in a garden where a performing bear stood guard against any
+attempt at theft by the disorderly and demoralised Germans. These things
+are another story.
+
+
+  BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+  Telegrams: "Scholarly, London."      41 and 43 Maddox Street,
+  Telephone: 1883 Mayfair.             Bond Street, London, W. 1.
+                                      _October, 1919._
+
+  Mr. Edward Arnold's
+  AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS, 1919.
+
+  JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS.
+  By STEPHEN GWYNN.
+
+  _With Portrait.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+The "History of John Redmond's Last Years," by Stephen Gwynn, is in the
+first place an historical document of unusual importance. It is an
+account of Irish political events at their most exciting period, written
+by an active member of Mr. Redmond's party who was in the confidence of
+his chief. The preliminary story of the struggle with the House of Lords
+and the prolonged fight over Home Rule is described by a keen student of
+parliamentary action. For the period which began with the war Mr. Gwynn
+has had access to all Redmond's papers. He writes of Redmond's effort to
+lead Ireland into the war from the standpoint of a soldier as well as a
+member of parliament. The last chapter gives to the world, for the first
+time, a full account of the Irish Convention which sat for eight months
+behind closed doors, and in which Redmond's career reached its dramatic
+catastrophe.
+
+The interlocking of varying chains of circumstance, the parliamentary
+struggle, the rise of the rival volunteer forces, the raising of Irish
+divisions, the rebellion and its sequel, and, finally, the effect of
+bringing Irishmen together into conference--all this is vividly
+pictured, with increasing detail as the book proceeds. In the opening,
+two short chapters recall the earlier history of the Irish party and
+Redmond's part in it.
+
+But the main interest centres in the character of Redmond himself. Mr.
+Gwynn does not work to display his leader as a hero without faults and
+incapable of mistakes. He shows the man as he knew him and worked under
+him, traces his career through its triumphs to reverses, and through
+gallant recovery to final defeat. A great man is made familiar to the
+reader, in his wisdom, his magnanimity, and his love of country. The
+tragic waste of great opportunities is portrayed in a story which has
+the quality of drama in it. Beside the picture of John Redmond himself
+there is sketched the gallant and sympathetic figure of his brother,
+who, after thirty-five years of parliamentary service, died with the
+foremost wave of his battalion at the battle of Messines.
+
+
+  A MEDLEY OF MEMORIES.
+  By the Rt. Rev. Sir DAVID HUNTER BLAIR, Bart.
+
+  _With Illustrations.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+Sir David Hunter Blair, late Abbot of Fort Augustus, in the first part
+of these fifty years' recollections, deals with his childhood and youth
+in Scotland, and gives a picture full of varied interest of Scottish
+country house life a generation or more ago. Very vivid, too, is the
+account of early days at what was then the most famous private school in
+England; and the chapter on Eton under Balston and Hornby gives
+thumbnail sketches of a great many Etonians, school-contemporaries of
+the writer's, and bearing names afterwards very well known for one
+reason or another. Eton was followed by Magdalen; and undergraduate life
+in the Oxford of 1872 is depicted with a light hand and many amusing
+touches. There was foreign travel after the Oxford days; and two of the
+most pleasantly descriptive chapters of the book deal with Rome in the
+reign of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., both of which Pontiffs the author
+served as Private Chamberlain. There is much also that is fresh and
+interesting in the section treating of the lives and personalities of
+some of the great English Catholic families of by-gone days.
+
+Sir David entered the Benedictine Order at the age of twenty-five; and
+the latter half of the book is concerned with his life as co-founder,
+and member of the community of, the great Highland Abbey of Fort
+Augustus, of which he rose later to be the second abbot. The intimate
+account given in these pages of the life of a modern monk will be new to
+most readers, who will find it very interesting reading. The writer's
+monastic experiences embrace not only his own beautiful home in the
+Central Highlands, but Benedictine life and work in England, in Belgium,
+Germany and Portugal, and in South America. One of the most novel and
+attractive chapters in the book is that dealing with the work of the
+Order in the vast territory of Brazil.
+
+The volume is illustrated with an excellent portrait, and with some
+clever black-and-white drawings, the work of Mr. Richard Anson, one of
+the author's religious brethren, and a member of the Benedictine
+community at Caldey Abbey, in South Wales.
+
+
+  WITH THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION.
+  By Major M. H. DONOHOE,
+  Army Intelligence Corps.
+  Special Correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle."
+
+  _With numerous Illustrations and Map.  Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+Among the many "side-shows" of the Great War, few are so difficult for
+the average reader to understand as the operations in Northern Persia,
+an offshoot of the Bagdhad venture, which had for their object the
+policing of the warlike tribes in an area almost unknown to Europeans,
+and included the various attempts to reach and hold Baku, and so get
+command of the Caspian and Caucasia.
+
+The story of these operations--carried out by little, half-forgotten
+bodies of troops, mainly local levies who broke at the critical moment
+and left their British officers and N.C.O.'s to carry on alone--is one
+of the most amazing of the whole War, and comprises many episodes that
+recall the most stirring events of the Empire's pioneering days.
+
+By happy chance, Major M. H. Donohoe, the famous War Correspondent,
+whose work for the _Daily Chronicle_ in all the wars of the past twenty
+years is well known, was in this part of the world as a Major on the
+Intelligence Staff, work for which his knowledge of men and languages
+off the beaten tract peculiarly fitted him. He has written the story of
+these operations as he saw them, chiefly as a member of the Staff of the
+Military Mission under General Byron, known officially as the "Baghdad
+Party," and unofficially as the "Hush-Hush Brigade," which set forth
+early in 1918 to join the Column under General Dunsterville. Though
+there is little of fighting in the story, the book gives an admirable
+picture of the Empire's work done faithfully under difficulties, and
+glimpses of places and peoples that are almost unknown even to the most
+venturesome traveller. Indeed, it is largely as a book about an unknown
+land that this volume will attract, together with its little
+pen-portraits of men and little pen-pictures of adventures, that Kipling
+would love.
+
+
+  A PHYSICIAN IN FRANCE.
+  By Major-General Sir WILMOT HERRINGHAM, K.C.M.G., C.B.,
+  Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; Consulting Physician to the
+  Forces Overseas.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =15s. net.=
+
+How the war, as seen at close quarters, struck a man eminent in another
+profession than that of arms is the distinguishing feature of this
+volume of personal impressions. It is not, however, merely the outcome
+of a few weeks' sojourn or "trip to the trenches," with one eye on an
+expectant public, for the author has four times seen autumn fade into
+winter on the flat countryside of Flanders, and, when the war ended, was
+still at his post rendering invaluable services amidst unforgettable
+scenes. The author's comments on the day-to-day happenings are
+distinguished by a tone that is at once manly, reflective, and
+good-humoured. Medical questions are naturally prominent, but are dealt
+with largely in a manner that should interest the layman at the present
+time. Sir Wilmot was with Lord Roberts when he died. A very pleasing
+feature of the book is the constant revelation of the author's love of
+nature and sport, and his happy way of introducing such topics, together
+with descriptions of the country around him, makes a welcome contrast to
+the stern events which form the staple material of the book. There are
+some very amusing stories.
+
+
+  LONDON MEN IN PALESTINE.
+  By ROWLANDS COLDICOTT.
+
+  _With maps.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =12s. 6d. net.=
+
+This book embraces so much more than the ordinary war story that we have
+a peculiar difficulty in describing it in a few chosen words.
+
+The curtain lifts the day after the battle of Sheria, one of the minor
+fights in General Allenby's first campaign--those movements of troops
+which came only to a pause with the capture of Jerusalem. Gaza has just
+been taken. You are introduced to one of the companies of a London
+battalion serving in the East, of which company the author is commander.
+The reading of a few lines, the passing of a few moments, causes you
+(such is the power of right words) to be _attached_ to that company and
+to move in imagination with it across the dazzling plain. When you have
+tramped a few miles you begin to realise, perhaps for the first time,
+the heat and torment of a day's march in Philistia. It is not long
+before you feel that you, too, are adventuring with the toiling
+soldiers; with them you wonder where the halting place will be, what
+sort of bivouac you are likely to hit upon. By this time you will have
+met the officers--Temple, Trobus, Jackson--and are coming to have a
+nodding acquaintance with the men. Desire to compass the unknown, and
+sympathetic interest in the experiences of a company of your own
+country-men, Londoners footing it in a foreign land, now takes you
+irresistibly into the very heart of the tale, and you become one with
+the narrator. With him you wander among the ruins of Gaza, pass into
+southern Palestine, and come to the foot-hills of Judea. With him you
+slowly become conscious that the long series of marches is planned to
+culminate in an assault upon Jerusalem. Now you are part of a dusty
+column winding up into Judea by the Jerusalem road, looking hour by hour
+upon those natural phenomena that suggested the parables. "London Men in
+Palestine" brings all this home to you as if you were a passer-by. Next,
+the massing of troops about the Holy City is described, and you are
+given a distant view of the city itself. A chapter follows that
+describes the coming of the rains. Then you spend a night in an old
+rock-engendered fortress-village while troops pass through to the
+attack, the storm still at its height. A chapter follows that tells of a
+crowded day--too complex and full of incident here to be described. The
+book closes with an exciting description of a fight on the Mount of
+Olives.
+
+
+  MONS, ANZAC, AND KUT.
+  By an M.P.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =14s. net.=
+
+The writer of these remarkable memoirs, whose anonymity will not veil
+his identity from his friends, is a man well known, not only in England,
+but also abroad, and the pages are full of the writer's charm, and
+gaiety of spirit, and "courage of a day that knows not death." Day by
+day, in the thick of the most stirring events in history, he jotted down
+his impressions at first hand, and although parts of the diary cannot
+yet be published, enough is given to the world to form a graphic and
+very human history.
+
+Our author was present at the most critical part of the Retreat from
+Mons. He took part in the dramatic defence of Landrecies, and the stand
+at Compiegne. Wounded, and a prisoner, he describes his experiences in a
+German hospital and his subsequent recapture by the British during the
+Marne advance.
+
+The scene then shifts to Gallipoli, where he was present at the immortal
+first landing, surely one of the noblest pages of our history. He took
+part in the fierce fighting at Suvla Bay, and, owing to his knowledge of
+Turkish, he had amazing experiences during the Armistice arranged for
+the burial of the dead.
+
+Later, the author was in Mesopotamia, where he accompanied the relieving
+force in their heroic attempt to save Kut. On several occasions he was
+sent out between the lines to conduct negociations between the Turks and
+ourselves.
+
+"Mons, Anzac, and Kut" . . . A day and a day will pass, before the man
+and the moment meet to give us another book like this. We congratulate
+ourselves that the author survived to write it.
+
+
+  THE STRUGGLE IN THE AIR.
+  1914-1918.
+  By Major CHARLES C. TURNER (late R.A.F.).
+Assoc. Fellow R. Aer. Soc., Cantor Lectures on Aeronautics, 1909. Author
+of "Aircraft of To-day," "The Romance of Aeronautics," and (with Gustav
+Hamel) of "Flying: Some Practical Experiences," Editor of "Aeronautics,"
+etc., etc., etc.
+
+  _With Illustrations.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =15s. net.=
+
+Major Turner served in the flying arm throughout the great conflict,
+chiefly as an instructor of officers of the Royal Naval Air Service, and
+then of the Royal Air Force in the principles of flight, aerial
+navigation, and other subjects. He did much experimental work, made one
+visit to the Front, and was mentioned in dispatches. The Armistice found
+him in the position of Chief Instructor at No. 2 School of Aeronautics,
+Oxford.
+
+The classification of this book explains its scope and arrangement. The
+chapters are as follows:
+
+Capabilities of Aircraft; Theory in 1914; The flight to France and
+Baptism of Fire; Early Surprises; Fighting in the Air, 1914-1915; 1916;
+1917; 1918; Zeppelins and the Defence; Night Flying; The Zeppelin
+Beaten; Aeroplane Raids on England; Bombing the Germans; Artillery
+Observation; Reconnaissance and Photography; Observation Balloons;
+Aircraft and Infantry; Sea Aircraft; Heroic Experimenters; Casualties in
+the Third Arm; The Robinson Quality.
+
+
+  CAUGHT BY THE TURKS.
+  By FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+This book contains a full measure of adventure and excitement. The
+author, who is a Captain in the Indian Cavalry, was serving in the Air
+Force in Mesopotamia in 1915, and was captured through an accident to
+the aeroplane while engaged in a hazardous and successful attempt to cut
+the Turkish telegraph lines north and west of Baghdad, just before the
+Battle of Ctesiphon. Then came the horrors of the journey to
+Constantinople, during which the "terrible Turk" showed himself in his
+worst colours; but it was in Constantinople that the most thrilling
+episodes of his captivity had their origin. The story of the Author's
+first attempt to escape (which did not succeed) and of his subsequent
+lucky dash for freedom, is one of intense interest, and is told in a
+most vivid and dramatic way.
+
+
+  JOHN HUGH ALLEN
+  OF THE GALLANT COMPANY
+
+  A Memoir by his Sister INA MONTGOMERY.
+
+  _With Portrait.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+This book is the life-story of a young New Zealander who was killed in
+action at the Dardanelles in June, 1915. It is told mainly in his own
+letters and diaries--which have been supplemented, so far as was
+needful, with the utmost tact and discretion by his sister--and falls
+naturally into three principal stages. Allen spent four very strenuous
+years, 1907-1911, at Cambridge, where he occupied a prominent position
+among his contemporaries as an active member, and eventually President
+of the Union. Though undergraduate politics are not usually taken very
+seriously by the outside world, yet this side of Allen's Cambridge
+career has an interest far transcending the merely personal one.
+Possessed, as he was, of remarkable gifts, which he had cultivated by
+assiduous practice as a speaker and writer, and passionately interested
+in all that concerns the British Empire, and the present and future
+relations between the United Kingdom and the Overseas Dominions, his
+record may well stand as representative of the attitude of the _élite_
+of the New Zealand youth towards these vital matters in the period just
+preceding the war.
+
+After Cambridge, he returned for a time to New Zealand, where he
+resolved to make his permanent home, but came back to England in
+December, 1913, to complete his legal studies and get called to the bar,
+and was still in England when the war broke out. Consequently the second
+stage is the story of seven months' experience as a lieutenant in the
+13th Battalion of the Worcesters, and his letters of this period give an
+attractive, and intensely graphic account of the making of the new army.
+Finally, he was despatched, with a few other selected officers, to the
+Dardanelles, arrived on May 25th at Cape Helles, and was attached to the
+Essex regiment. The last stage, brief, glorious, and terrible, lasted
+only twelve days but, brief as it was, he had time to draw an
+enthralling picture of the unexampled horrors of this particular phase
+of trench-warfare. The book is steeped, from beginning to end, in a
+sober but fervent enthusiasm; and the cult of the Empire, in its noblest
+form, has seldom been as finely exemplified as by the life and death of
+John Allen.
+
+
+  NOËL ROSS AND HIS WORK.
+  Edited by HIS PARENTS.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+A series of charming sketches by a young New Zealander, who died in
+December, 1917, on the threshold of a brilliant literary career. Noël
+Ross was one of those daring Anzacs who made the landing on Gallipoli.
+Wounded in the early days of the terrible fighting there, he was
+discharged from the Army, came to London, rejoined there, and obtained a
+commission in the Royal Field Artillery. Afterwards he became a valued
+member of the Editorial Staff of _The Times_, on which his genius was at
+once recognized and highly appreciated. Much of his work appeared in
+_The Times_, and he was also a contributor to _Punch_. In collaboration
+with his father, Captain Malcolm Ross, the New Zealand War
+Correspondent, he was the author of "Light and Shade in War," of which
+the _Daily Mail_ said: "It is full of Anzac virility, full of Anzac
+buoyancy, and surcharged with that devil-may-care humour that has so
+astounded us jaded peoples of an older world."
+
+His writings attracted the attention of such capable writers as Rudyard
+Kipling, and Sir Ian Hamilton, who said he reminded him in many ways of
+that gallant and brilliant young Englishman, Rupert Brooke.
+
+
+  WITH THE BRITISH INTERNED IN SWITZERLAND.
+  By Lieut.-Colonel H. P. PICOT, C.B.E.,
+
+Late Military Attaché, 1914-16, and British Officer in Charge of the
+Interned, 1916-18.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo.  Cloth._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+In this volume Colonel Picot tells us, in simple and lucid fashion, how
+some thousands of our much tried and suffering countrymen were
+transferred--to the eternal credit of Switzerland--from the harsh
+conditions of captivity to a neutral soil, there to live in comparative
+freedom amid friendly surroundings. He describes in some detail the
+initiative taken by the Swiss Government on behalf of the Prisoners of
+War in general, and the negociations which preceded the acceptance by
+the Belligerent States of the principle of Internment, and then recounts
+the measures taken by that Government for the hospitalization of some
+30,000 Prisoners of War, and the organization of a Medical Service for
+the treatment of the sick and wounded.
+
+Turning, then, more particularly to the group of British prisoners, he
+deals with their discipline, their camp life, the steps taken for
+spiritual welfare, and the organization of sports and recreations, and
+an interesting chapter records the efforts made to afford them technical
+training in view of their return to civil life.
+
+The book also comprises a resumé of the formation and development of the
+Bread Bureau at Berne, which ultimately, in providing bread for 100,000
+British prisoners of war in Germany, doubtless saved countless lives;
+and a description of the activities of the British Legation Red Cross
+Organization, both of which institutions were founded by Lady Grant
+Duff, wife of H.M.'s Minister at Berne.
+
+Colonel Picot throws many interesting sidelights on life in Switzerland
+in war-time--diplomatic, social, and artistic--and his modest and
+self-effacing narrative dwells generously on the devotion of all those
+who, whether by appointment or chance, were associated with him in his
+beneficent labours.
+
+It is hoped that this account of a special phase in the history of our
+countrymen will prove of interest to that large public who have shown in
+countless ways their sympathy with all that concerns the welfare of
+Prisoners of War.
+
+
+  A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY EIGHTY YEARS AGO.
+  By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK,
+  Author of "Tante," "The Encounter," etc.
+
+  _Demy 8vo.  Cloth._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+With exquisite literary art which the reading public has recognised in
+"Tante" and others of her novels, the author of this book tells of a
+great lady's childhood in picturesque Brittany in the middle of the last
+century. It covers that period of life around which the tenderest and
+most vivid memories cluster; a childhood set in a district of France
+rich in romance, and rich in old loyalties to manners and customs of a
+gracious era that is irrevocably in the past.
+
+Charming vignettes of character, marvellous descriptions of houses,
+costumes and scenery, short stories in silhouette of pathetic or
+humorous characters--these are also in the book.
+
+And through it all the author is seen re-creating a background, which
+has profoundly influenced one of the finest literary artists of the last
+century.
+
+
+  GARDENS: THEIR FORM AND DESIGN.
+  By the Viscountess WOLSELEY.
+
+  _With numerous Illustrations by_ Miss M. G. CAMPION.
+
+  _1 vol.  Medium 8vo._  =21s. net.=
+
+The present volume, which is beautifully got up and illustrated, deals
+with form and line in the garden, a subject comparatively new in
+England.
+
+Lady Wolseley's book suggests simple, inexpensive means--the outcome of
+practical knowledge and experience--for achieving charming results in
+gardens of all sizes. Her College of Gardening at Glynde has shown Lady
+Wolseley how best to make clear to those who have never before thought
+about garden design, some of the complex subjects embraced by it, such
+as Water Gardens, Rock Gardens, Treillage, Paved Gardens, Surprise
+Gardens, etc. The book contains many decorative and imaginative drawings
+by Miss Mary G. Campion, as well as a large number of practical diagrams
+and plans, which further illustrate the author's ideas and add to the
+value of the book.
+
+
+  MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS.
+  SIXTH SERIES.
+  By the Rt. Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bt.,
+  F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+  _With photogravure frontispiece.  Large Crown 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+It is some years since the fifth series of "Memories of the Months" was
+issued, but the demand for Sir Herbert Maxwell's charming volumes
+continues unabated. Every year rings new changes on the old order of
+Nature, and the observant eye can always find fresh features on the face
+of the Seasons. Sir Herbert Maxwell goes out to meet Nature on the moor
+and loch, in garden and forest, and writes of what he sees and feels. It
+is a volume of excellent gossip, the note-book of a well-informed and
+high-spirited student of Nature, where the sportsman's ardour is
+tempered always with the sympathy of the lover of wild things, and the
+naturalist's interest is leavened with the humour of a cultivated man of
+the world. This is what gives the work its abiding charm, and makes
+these memories fill the place of old friends on the library bookshelf.
+
+
+  SINGLE-HANDED CRUISING.
+  By FRANCIS B. COOKE,
+  Author of "The Corinthian Yachtsman's Handbook," "Cruising Hints," Etc.
+
+  _Illustrated._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+The contents of this volume being based upon the author's many years'
+practical experience of single-handed sailing, are sure to be acceptable
+to those who, either from choice or necessity, make a practice of
+cruising alone. Of the four thousand or more yachts whose names appear
+in Lloyd's Register, quite a considerable proportion are small craft
+used for the most part for week-end cruising, and single-handed sailing
+is a proposition that the owner of a week-ender cannot afford altogether
+to ignore. To be dependent upon the assistance of friends, who may leave
+one in the lurch at the eleventh hour, is a miserable business that can
+only be avoided by having a yacht which one is capable of handling
+alone. The ideal arrangement is to have a vessel of sufficient size to
+accommodate one or two guests and yet not too large to be sailed
+single-handed at a pinch. In this book Mr. Cooke gives some valuable
+hints on the equipment and handling of such a craft, which, it may be
+remarked, can, in the absence of paid hands, be maintained at
+comparatively small cost.
+
+
+  MODERN ROADS.
+  By H. PERCY BOULNOIS, M. Inst. C.E., F.R. San. Inst., etc.
+
+  _Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+The author is well known as one of the leading authorities on
+road-making, and he deals at length with Traffic, Water-bound Macadam
+Roads, Surface Tarring, Bituminous Roads, Waves and Corrugations,
+Slippery Roads, Paved Streets (Stone and Wood, etc.), Concrete Road
+Construction, etc.
+
+
+  A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS.
+  By Dr. M. R. JAMES,
+  Provost of Eton College.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =4s. 6d. net.=
+
+The Provost of Eton needs no introduction as a past master of the art of
+making our flesh creep, and those who have enjoyed his earlier books may
+rest assured that his hand has lost none of its blood-curdling cunning.
+Neither is it necessary to remind them that Dr. James's inexhaustible
+stories of archćological erudition furnish him with a unique power of
+giving his gruesome tales a picturesque setting, and heightening by
+their literary and antiquarian charm the exquisite pleasure derived from
+thrills of imaginary terror. This latter quality has never been more
+happily displayed than in the stories contained in the present volume,
+which we submit with great confidence to the judgment of all who
+appreciate--and who does not?--a good old-fashioned hair-raising ghost
+story.
+
+
+  New Editions.
+
+  GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY.
+  By Dr. M. R. JAMES,
+  Provost of Eton College.
+
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo._  =5s. net.=
+
+
+  MORE GHOST STORIES.
+  By Dr. M. R. JAMES.
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo._  =5s. net.=
+
+
+  THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN.
+  By Captain HARRY GRAHAM,
+  Author of "Ruthless Rhymes," etc.
+
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =3s. 6d. net.=
+
+
+  THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN.
+  By Captain HARRY GRAHAM.
+
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =3s. 6d. net.=
+
+
+  _The Modern Educator's Library._
+  General Editor: Professor A. A. COCK.
+
+The present age is seeing an unprecedented advance in educational theory
+and practice; its whole outlook on the ideals and methods of teaching is
+being widened. The aim of this new series is to present the considered
+views of teachers of wide experience, and eminent ability, upon the
+changes in method involved in this development, and upon the problems
+which still remain to be solved, in the several branches of teaching
+with which they are most intimately connected. It is hoped, therefore,
+that these volumes will be instructive not only to teachers, but to all
+who are interested in the progress of education.
+
+Each volume contains an index and a comprehensive bibliography of the
+subject with which it deals.
+
+
+  EDUCATION: ITS DATA AND FIRST PRINCIPLES.
+  By T. PERCY NUNN, M.A., D.Sc.,
+
+Professor of Education in the University of London; Author of "The Aims
+and Achievements of Scientific Method," "The Teaching of Algebra," Etc.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+Dr. Nunn's volume really forms an introduction to the whole series, and
+deals with the fundamental questions which lie at the root of
+educational inquiry. The first is that of the aims of education. These,
+he says, are always correlative to ideals of life, and, as ideals of
+life are eternally at variance, their conflict will be reflected in
+educational theories. The individualism of post-reformation Europe
+gradually gave way to a reaction culminating in Hegel, which pictured
+the state as the superentity of which the single life is but a fugitive
+element. The logical result of this Hegelian ideal the world has just
+seen, and educators of to-day have to decide whether to foster this
+sinister tradition or to help humanity to escape from it to something
+better. What we need is a doctrine which, while admitting the importance
+of the social element in man, reasserts the importance of the
+individual.
+
+This notion of individuality as the ideal of life is worked out at
+length, and on the results of this investigation are based the
+conclusions which are reached upon the practical problem of embodying
+this ideal in teaching. Among other subjects, the author deals with
+Routine and Ritual, Play, Nature and Nurture, Imitation, Instinct; and
+there is a very illuminating last chapter on "The School and the
+Individual."
+
+
+  MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
+  By SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc., Litt.D.
+
+Late Head Mistress of the North London Collegiate School for Girls
+Author of "Educational Ends," etc.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+In this book, Mrs. Bryant, whose writings on educational subjects are
+widely known, takes the view that in order to produce the best result
+over the widest area, the teaching of morality through the development
+of religious faith, and its teaching by direct appeal to self-respect,
+reason, sympathy and common sense, are both necessary. In religion, more
+than in anything else, different individuals must follow different paths
+to the goal.
+
+Upon this basis the book falls into four parts. The first deals with the
+processes of spiritual self-realisation by means of interest in
+knowledge and art, and of personal affections and social interest, which
+all emerge in the development of conscience. The second part treats of
+the moral ideal and how it is set forth by means of heroic romance and
+history, and in the teaching of Aristotle, to build up the future
+citizen. The third presents the religious ideal, its beginnings and the
+background of ideas implied by it, together with suggestions for study
+of the Bible and the lives of the Saints. In the fourth part the problem
+of the reasoned presentment of religious truths is dealt with in detail.
+
+There is no doubt that this book makes a very considerable addition to
+what has already been written on the subject of religious education.
+
+
+  THE TEACHING OF MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.
+  By H. G. ATKINS, M.A.,
+
+Professor of German in King's College, University of London, and
+University Reader in German,
+
+  AND
+
+  H. L. HUTTON, M.A.,
+
+Senior Modern Language Master at Merchant Taylors' School.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+The first part of this book deals with the School, the second with the
+University. While each part is mainly written by one of the authors,
+they have acted in collaboration and have treated the two subjects as
+interdependent. They have referred only briefly to the main features of
+the past history, and have chiefly tried to give a broad survey of the
+present position of modern language teaching, and the desirable policy
+for the future.
+
+As regards the School, conclusions are first reached as to the relative
+amount of time to be devoted to modern languages in the curriculum, and
+the various branches of the subject--its organisation and methods, the
+place of grammar and the history of the language--are then discussed. A
+chapter is devoted to the questions relating to the second foreign
+language, and the study is linked up with the University course.
+
+In the second part Professor Atkins traces the different ends to which
+the School course continued at the University may lead, with special
+reference to the higher Civil Service Examinations and to the training
+of Secondary School Teachers.
+
+The general plan of the book was worked out before the publication of
+the report of the Government Committee appointed by the Prime Minister
+to enquire into the position of Modern Languages in the educational
+system of Great Britain. With the report, however, the authors'
+conclusions were in the main found to agree, and the text of the book
+has been brought up-to-date by references to the report which have been
+made in footnotes as well as in places in the text. No further
+modifications were thought to be necessary.
+
+The book will be found to give a comprehensive review of the whole field
+of modern language teaching and some valuable help towards the solution
+of its problems.
+
+
+  THE CHILD UNDER EIGHT.
+  By E. R. MURRAY,
+
+Vice-Principal of Maria Grey Training College; Author of "Froebel as a
+Pioneer in Modern Psychology," etc.,
+
+  AND
+
+  HENRIETTA BROWN SMITH, LL.A.,
+
+Lecturer in Education, Goldsmith's College, University of London; Editor
+of "Education by Life."
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+The authors of this book deal with the young child at the outset of its
+education, a stage the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. The
+volume is written in two parts, the first dealing with the child in the
+Nursery and Kindergarten, and the second with the child in the State
+School. Much that is said is naturally applicable to either form of
+School, and, where this is so, repetition has been avoided by means of
+cross references.
+
+The authors find that the great weakness of English education in the
+past has been want of a definite aim to put before the children, and the
+want of a philosophy for the teacher. Without some understanding of the
+meaning and purpose of life the teacher is at the mercy of every fad,
+and is apt to exalt method above principle. This book is an attempt to
+gather together certain recognised principles, and to show in the light
+of actual experience how these may be applied to existing circumstances.
+They put forward a strong plea for the recognition of the true value of
+Play, the "spontaneous activity in all directions," and for courage and
+faith on the part of the teacher to put this recognition into practice;
+and they look forward to the time when the conditions of public
+Elementary Schools, from the Nursery School up, will be such--in point
+of numbers, space, situation and beauty of surroundings--that parents of
+any class will gladly let their children attend them.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+_Further volumes in this series are in preparation and will be published
+shortly._
+
+
+  FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MUSIC.
+  By F. J. READ, Mus. Doc. (Oxon.)
+
+Formerly Professor at the Royal College of Music.
+
+  _Crown 8vo._  =1s. 6d.=
+
+This book is the result of the author's long experience as Professor of
+Theory at the Royal College of Music, and is the clearest and most
+concise treatise of the kind that has yet been written.
+
+    "It is a useful little book, covering a wider field than any
+    other of the kind that we know."--_The Times._
+
+    "It is calculated to quicken interest in various subjects
+    outside the normal scope of an elementary musical grammar. The
+    illustrated chapter on orchestral instruments, for instance, is
+    a welcome and stimulating innovation."--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+
+  LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 1.
+
+
+  =Transcriber's Notes:=
+  hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the original
+  Page 21, Azizieh possibly should be Aziziah, but left as is
+  Page 58, no common languge ==> no common language
+  Page 81, smallest detail, for month ==> smallest detail, for months
+  Page 85, supected of something ==> suspected of something
+  Page 123, Mr. Morgenthan ==> Mr. Morgenthau
+  Announcements at end, page 3, Bagdhad venture ==> Baghdad venture
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Caught by the Turks, by Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAUGHT BY THE TURKS ***
+
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+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Caught by the Turks,
+      by Francis Yeats-Brown.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caught by the Turks, by Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Caught by the Turks
+
+Author: Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2011 [EBook #37343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAUGHT BY THE TURKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Watson, Ross Cooling, Mark Akrigg and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
+http://www.pgdpcanada.net ((This file was produced from
+images generously made available by The Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries))
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h1>CAUGHT BY THE TURKS</h1>
+<br />
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN</h2>
+
+<br /><br /><br />
+<h3>WITH PORTRAITS AND PLANS</h3>
+
+<br /><br /><br />
+<h3>LONDON</h3>
+<h2>EDWARD ARNOLD</h2>
+<h3>1919</h3>
+<h4>[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</h4>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<h4>To</h4>
+<h3>LADY PAUL</h3>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS" width="60%">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">CHAPTER</td>
+<td class="tdr">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; I. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_I">CAPTURE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp;II. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_II">A SHADOWLAND OF ARABESQUES</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; III. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_III">THE TERRIBLE TURK</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">42</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; IV. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_IV">"OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION"</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">56</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp;V. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_V">THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">75</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; VI. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">95</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;VII. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_VII">THE COMIC HOSPITAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">102</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">VIII. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">OUR FIRST ESCAPE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">122</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; IX. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_IX">A CITY OF DISGUISES</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">140</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp;X. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_X">RECAPTURED</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">159</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp; XI. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_XI">THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">172</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;XII. &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_XII">OUR SECOND ESCAPE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">198</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="ILLUSTRATIONS" width="80%">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"></td>
+<td class="tdr">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#ARMENIAN_PATRIARCHATE">THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE AT PSAMATTIA, CONSTANTINOPLE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">137</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#GERMAN_GOVERNESS">THE AUTHOR AS A GERMAN GOVERNESS</a></td>
+<td class="tdr"><i>facing p.</i> &nbsp; 154</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#HUNGARIAN_MECHANIC">THE AUTHOR AS A HUNGARIAN MECHANIC</a></td>
+<td class="tdr"><i>facing p.</i> &nbsp; 170</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#SERASKERAT_SQUARE">THE SQUARE OF THE SERASKERAT, CONSTANTINOPLE</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">213</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span>
+<h1>CAUGHT BY THE TURKS</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>CAPTURE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Half an hour before dawn on November the thirteenth, 1915. . . .</p>
+
+<p>We were on an aerodrome by the River Tigris, below Baghdad, about to
+start out to cut the telegraph lines behind the Turkish position.</p>
+
+<p>My pilot ran his engine to free the cylinders from the cold of night,
+while I stowed away in the body of the machine some necklaces of
+gun-cotton, some wire cutters, a rifle, Verey lights, provisions, and
+the specially prepared map&mdash;prepared for the eventuality of its falling
+into the hands of the Turks&mdash;on which nothing was traced except our
+intended route to the telegraph lines west and north of Baghdad. Some
+primers, which are the explosive charges designed to detonate the
+gun-cotton, I carefully stowed away in another part of the machine, and
+with even more care&mdash;trepidation, indeed&mdash;I put into my pockets the
+highly explosive pencils of fulminate of mercury, which detonate the
+primers which detonate the gun-cotton.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then I climbed gingerly aboard, feeling rather highly charged with
+explosives and excitement.</p>
+
+<p>For some time the pilot continued to run his engine and watch the
+revolution meter. The warmer the engine became, the colder I got, for
+the prelude to adventure is always a chilly business. Unlike the engine,
+I did not warm to my work during those waiting moments. At last,
+however, the pilot waved his hand to give the signal to stand clear, and
+we slid away on the flight that was to be our last for many a day. The
+exhaust gases of our engine lit the darkness behind me with a ring of
+fire. I looked back as we taxied down the aerodrome, and saw the
+mechanics melting away to their morning tea. Only one figure remained, a
+young pilot in a black and yellow fur coat, who had left his warm bed to
+wish us luck. For a moment I saw him standing there, framed in flame,
+looking after us regretfully. Then I saw him no more, and later they
+told me (but it was not true) that he had died at Ctesiphon.</p>
+
+<p>We rose over the tents of our camp at Aziziah, all silver and still in
+the half-light, and headed for the Turkish outposts at El Kutunieh.
+Their bivouac fires mounted straight to heaven. It was a calm and
+cloudless dawn, ideal weather for the business we had been sent out to
+do.</p>
+
+<p>At all costs, we had been told, the telegraphic communications west and
+north of Baghdad must be cut that day. Von der Goltz and a German<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+battery of quick-firing guns were hasting down from Mosul to help their
+stricken ally, and reinforcements of the best Anatolian troops,
+magnificently equipped and organised by the Germans, were on their way
+from Gallipoli, whence they came flushed with the confidence of success.</p>
+
+<p>Our attack on Ctesiphon was imminent. It was a matter of moments whether
+the Turkish reinforcements would arrive in time. Delay and confusion in
+the Turkish rear would have helped us greatly, and the moral and
+material advantage of cutting communications between Nur-ed-Din, the
+vacillating Commander-in-Chief defending Baghdad, and Von der Goltz, the
+veteran of victories, was obvious and unquestionable. But could we do it
+in an old Maurice Farman biplane?</p>
+
+<p>Desperate needs need desperate measures. The attempt to take Baghdad was
+desperate&mdash;futile perhaps&mdash;and contrary to the advice of the great
+soldier who led the attack in the glorious but unsuccessful action of
+Ctesiphon. And so also, in a small way, ours was a desperate mission.
+Our machine could carry neither oil nor petrol enough for the journey,
+and special arrangements had to be made for carrying spare tins of
+lubricant and fuel. With these we were to refill at our first halt.
+While I was destroying the telegraph line, my pilot was to replenish the
+tanks of his machine. According to the map this should have been
+feasible, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> telegraph lines at the place we had selected for our
+demolition ran through a blank desert, two miles from the nearest track.
+That the map was wrong we did not know.</p>
+
+<p>All seemed quite hopeful therefore. We had got off "according to plan,"
+and the engine was running beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>It was stimulating to see the stir of El Kutunieh as we sailed over the
+Turks at a thousand feet. They ran to take cover from the bombs which
+had so often greeted them at sunrise; but for once we sailed placidly
+on, having other fish to fry, and left them to the pleasures of
+anticipation. Far behind us a few puffs from their ridiculous apology
+for an anti-aircraft gun blossomed like sudden flowers and then melted
+in the sunlight above the world. Below, in the desert, it was still
+dark. Men were rubbing their eyes in El Kutunieh and cursing us.</p>
+
+<p>But for us day had dawned. As we rose, there rose behind us a round
+cheerful sun, whose rays caught our trail and spangled it with light,
+and danced in my eyes as I looked back through the propeller, and lit up
+the celluloid floor of the nacelle as if to help me see my implements.
+That dawn was jubilant with hope&mdash;I felt inclined to dance. And I sang
+from sheer exhilaration&mdash;a sort of swan song (as I see it now) before
+captivity. The desert seemed barren no longer. Transmuted by the sunrise
+those "miles and miles of nothing at all" became a limitless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> expanse
+where all the kingdoms of the world were spread out before our eyes.
+Away to the east the Tigris wound like a snake among the sands; to
+westward, a huddle of houses and date-palms with an occasional gleam
+from the gold domes of Kazimain, lay the city of the Arabian Nights,
+where Haroun al Raschid once reigned, and where now there is hope his
+spirit may reign again. Baghdad nestled among its date-palms, with
+little wisps of cloud still shrouding its sleep, all unconscious of the
+great demonstration it was to give before noon to two forlorn and
+captive airmen. To the north lay the Great Desert with a hint of violet
+hills on the far horizon. To the south also lay the Great Desert, with
+no feature on its yellow face save the scar of some irrigation cut made
+in the twilight time of history.</p>
+
+<p>But the beauties of Nature were not for us: we were intent on the works
+of man. There was unwonted traffic across the bridge over the great Arch
+of Ctesiphon. The enemy river craft were early astir, and so were their
+antediluvian Archies. These latter troubled us no more than was their
+wont, but the activity at Qusaibah and Sulman Pak was disquieting.
+Trains of carts were moving across the river from the right to the left
+bank. Tugs, gravid with troops, were on their way from Baghdad. In
+trenches and gun emplacements feverish work was in progress. Like ants
+at a burrow, men were dragging overhead cover into place. Lines of
+fatigue parties were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> marching hither and thither. New support trenches
+were being dug.</p>
+
+<p>As always, when one saw these things, one longed for more eyes, better
+eyes, an abler pencil, to record them for our staff. An observer has
+great responsibilities at times: one cannot help remembering that a
+missed obstruction, a forgotten emplacement may mean a terrible toll of
+suffering. Our men would soon attack these trenches, relying largely on
+our photographs and information. . . . When, a week later, there rose
+above the battle the souls of all the brave men dead at Ctesiphon,
+seeing then with clearer eyes than mine, I pray they forgave our
+shortcomings and remembered we did our best.</p>
+
+<p>We could not circle over Ctesiphon, in spite of the interest we saw
+there, until our duty was performed, and had to fly on, leaving it to
+eastward.</p>
+
+<p>On the return journey, however, we promised ourselves as full an
+investigation as our petrol supply allowed, and had we returned with our
+report on what we had seen and done that day, things might have been
+very different. But what's the use of might-have-beens?</p>
+
+<p>After an hour's flying we sighted the telegraph line that was our
+objective, but when we approached it more closely a sad surprise awaited
+us, for instead of the blank surface which the map portrayed, we found
+that the line ran along a busy thoroughfare leading to Baghdad. Some ten
+thousand camels, it seemed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> my disappointed eyes, were swaying and
+slouching towards the markets of the capital. We came low to observe the
+traffic better, and the camels craned their long necks upwards, burbling
+with surprise at this great new bird they had never seen. The ships of
+the desert, it seemed to me, disliked the ship of the air as much as we
+disapproved of them.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the camels, there were ammunition carts and armed soldiers along
+the road, making a landing impossible. Our demolition would only take
+three minutes under favourable conditions, but in three minutes even an
+Arab soldier can be trusted to hit an aeroplane and two airmen at
+point-blank range.</p>
+
+<p>So we flew westward down the road, looking for a landing ground. Baghdad
+was behind us now. On our right lay a great lake, and ahead we got an
+occasional glimpse of the Euphrates in the morning sun. At last&mdash;near a
+mound, which we afterwards heard was Nimrod's tomb&mdash;we saw that the
+telegraph line took a turn to northward, leaving the road by a mile or
+more. Here we decided to land. Nimrod's tomb was to be the tomb of our
+activities.</p>
+
+<p>While we were circling down I felt exactly as one feels at the start of
+a race, watching for the starting gate to rise. It was a tense but
+delightful moment.</p>
+
+<p>We made a perfect landing, and ran straight and evenly towards the
+telegraph posts. I had already stripped myself of my coat and all
+unnecessary gear, and wore sandshoes in case I had to climb a post to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+get at the insulators. The detonators were in my pocket, the wire
+clippers hung at my belt. I stooped down to take a necklace of
+gun-cotton from the floor of the 'bus, and as I did so, I felt a slight
+bump and a slight splintering of wood.</p>
+
+<p>We had stopped.</p>
+
+<p>I jumped out of the machine, still sure that all was well. And then&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw that our left wing tip had crashed into a telegraph post.
+Even so the full extent of our disaster dawned slowly on me. I could not
+believe that we had broken something vital. Yet the pilot was quite
+sure.</p>
+
+<p>The leading edge of the plane was broken. Our flying days were finished.
+It had been my pilot's misfortune, far more than his fault, that we had
+crashed. The unexpected smoothness of the landing ground, and a rear
+wind that no one could have foreseen, had brought about disaster.
+Nothing could be done. I stood silent&mdash;while hope sank from its zenith,
+to the nadir of disappointment. Nothing remained&mdash;except to do our job.</p>
+
+<p>With light feet but heart of lead, I ran across to another telegraph
+post, leaving the pilot to ascertain whether by some miracle we might
+not be able to get our machine to safety. But even as I left him I knew
+that there was no hope; the only thing that remained was to destroy the
+line and then take our chance with the Arabs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By the time I had fixed the explosive necklace round the post, a few
+stray Arabs, who had been watching our descent, fired at us from
+horseback. I set the fuse and lit it, then strolled back to the machine,
+where the pilot confirmed my worst fears. The machine was unflyable.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there was a loud bang. The charge had done its work and the
+post was neatly cut in two.</p>
+
+<p>Horsemen were now appearing from the four quarters of the desert. On
+hearing the explosion the mounted men instantly wheeled about and
+galloped off in the opposite direction, while those on foot took cover,
+lying flat on their faces. To encourage the belief in our aggressive
+force, the pilot stood on the seat of the 'bus and treated them to
+several bursts of rapid fire.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I took another necklace of gun-cotton and returned to my
+demolition. This second charge I affixed to the wires and insulators of
+the fallen post, so as to render repair more difficult. While I was thus
+engaged, I noticed that spurts of sand were kicking up all about me. The
+fire had increased in accuracy and intensity. So accurate indeed had it
+become that I guessed that the Arabs (who cannot hit a haystack) had
+been reinforced by regulars. I lit the fuse and covered the hundred
+yards back to the machine in my very best time (which is about fifteen
+seconds) to get cover and companionship. A hot fire was being directed
+on to the machine now, at ranges varying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> from fifty to five hundred
+yards. It was not a pleasant situation, and I experienced a curious
+mixed feeling of regret and relief: regret that there was nothing more
+to do, relief that something at least had been accomplished to earn the
+long repose before us. On the nature of this repose I had never
+speculated, and even now the fate that awaited us seemed immaterial so
+long as something happened quickly. One wanted to get it over. I was
+very frightened, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>Bang!</p>
+
+<p>The second charge had exploded, and the telegraph wires whipped back and
+festooned themselves round our machine. The insulators were dust, no
+doubt, and the damage would probably take some days to repair. So far so
+good. Our job was done in so far as it lay in our power to do it.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that fellow in blue?" said the pilot to me, pointing to a
+ferocious individual about a hundred yards away who was brandishing a
+curved cutlass. "I think it must be an officer. We had better give
+ourselves up to him when the time comes."</p>
+
+<p>I cordially agreed, but rather doubted that the time would ever come. It
+speaks volumes for Arab marksmanship that they missed our machine about
+as often as they hit it.</p>
+
+<p>I destroyed a few private papers, and then, as it was obviously useless
+to return the fire of two hundred men with a single rifle, we started up
+the engine again,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> more with the idea of doing something than with any
+hope of getting away.</p>
+
+<p>The machine, it may be mentioned, was not to be destroyed in the event
+of a breakdown such as this, because our army hoped to be in Baghdad
+within a week, and it would have been impossible for the Turks to carry
+it with them in the case of a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The Arabs hesitated to advance, and still continued to pour in a hot
+fire. Feeling the situation was becoming ridiculous, I got into the
+aeroplane and determined to attempt flying it. Now I am not a pilot, and
+know little of machines. The pilot had pronounced the aeroplane to be
+unflyable, and very rightly did not accompany me.</p>
+
+<p>But I was pigheaded and determined "to have one more flip in the old
+'bus." After disentangling the wires that had whipped round the king
+posts, I got into the pilot's seat and taxied away down wind. Then I
+turned, managing the operation with fair success, and skimmed back
+towards the pilot with greatly increasing speed. But all my efforts did
+not succeed in making the machine lift clear of the ground. Some Arabs
+were now rushing towards the pilot, and a troop of mounted gendarmes
+were galloping in my direction. I tried to swerve to avoid these men,
+but could not make the machine answer to her controls. Then I pulled the
+stick back frantically in a last effort to rise above them. She gave a
+little hop, then floundered down in the middle of the cavalry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Somehow or other the 'bus was standing still, and I was on the ground
+beside it.</p>
+
+<p>Mounted gendarmes surrounded me with rifles levelled, not at me, but at
+the machine. I cocked my revolver and put it behind my back, hesitating.
+Then an old gendarme spurred his horse up to me and held out his right
+hand in the friendliest possible fashion. I grasped it in surprise, for
+the grip he gave me was a grip I knew, proving that even here in the
+desert men are sometimes brothers. Then, emptying out the cartridges
+from my revolver in case of accidents, I handed it to him. Not very
+heroic certainly&mdash;but then surrendering is a sorry business: the best
+that can be said for it is that it is sometimes common sense.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the gentleman in blue, whose appearance we had previously
+discussed, suddenly appeared behind me and swinging up his scimitar with
+both hands, struck me a violent blow where neck joins shoulder. This
+blow deprived me of all feeling for a moment. On coming-to I discovered
+that my aggressor was not dressed in blue at all; he wore no stitch of
+raiment of any description, but whether he was painted with woad or only
+tanned by the sun I had no opportunity of enquiring. Whether, again, the
+kindly gendarme had turned the blow or whether the <i>ghazi</i> had purposely
+hit me with the flat of his weapon, I never discovered; but of this much
+I am certain, that except for that kindly gendarme&mdash;to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> whom may Allah
+bring blessings&mdash;this story would not have been written.</p>
+
+<p>I made my way to the pilot as soon as I was able to do so, and found him
+bleeding profusely from a wound in the head, surrounded by a hundred
+tearing, screaming Arabs. Every minute, the number of the Arabs was
+increasing, and the gendarmes had the greatest difficulty in protecting
+us. All round us excited horsemen circled, firing <i>feux de joie</i> and
+uttering hoarse cries of exultation. We were making slow progress
+towards the police post about a mile distant, but at times, so fiercely
+did the throng press round us, I doubted if we should ever come through.</p>
+
+<p>Once, yielding to popular clamour, the police stopped and parleyed with
+some Arab chiefs who had arrived upon the scene. After a heated colloquy
+of which we did not understand one word, in spite of our not unnatural
+interest, the Turkish gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and appeared to
+accede to the Arabs' demands. Several of the more ruffianly among them
+seized the pilot and pulled his flying coat over his head. The memory of
+that moment is the most unpleasant in my life, and I cannot, try as I
+will, entirely dissociate myself from the horror of what I thought would
+happen. Even now it often holds sleep at arm's length. Not the fact of
+death, but the imagined manner of it, dismayed me. I bitterly regretted
+having surrendered my revolver only to be thus tamely murdered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I had been also seized and borne down under a crowd of Arabs.
+We fought for some time, and I had a glimpse of the pilot, who is a very
+clever boxer, upholding British traditions with his fists. . . .</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the scene changed from tragedy to farce. We were not going to
+be murdered at all, but only robbed. And the pilot had given our <i>ghazi</i>
+friend a black eye&mdash;blacker than his skin.</p>
+
+<p>At length I got free, minus all my possessions except my wrist watch,
+which they did not see, and saw that the pilot also had his head above
+the scrimmage, still "bloody but unbowed." The worst was over. That had
+been the climax of my capture.</p>
+
+<p>All that happened thereafter, until chances of escape occurred, was in a
+<i>diminuendo</i> of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>All I really longed for now was for something to smoke. My cigarette
+case had gone.</p>
+
+<p>The gendarmes, who had stood aside through these proceedings, now
+returned and hurried us towards the police post, while most of the
+captors remained behind disputing about our loot. All this time the
+machine had been absolutely neglected, but now I saw some Arabs stalking
+cautiously up to it and discharging their firearms. Feeling the machine
+would be damaged beyond repair if they continued firing at it, and so
+rendered useless to us after our imminent capture of Baghdad, I tried to
+explain to the gendarmes that it was quite unnecessary to waste good
+lead on it, its potentiality for evil having vanished with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> our
+surrender. The impression I conveyed, however, was that there was a
+third officer in the machine, and a large party adjourned to
+investigate. During this diversion I tried to jump on to a white mare,
+whose owner had left her to go towards the machine, but received a
+second nasty blow on the spine for my pains. Again the kindly gendarme
+came to my rescue, seeing, I suppose, that I was looking pretty blue. He
+addressed me as "Baba," and&mdash;may Allah give him increase!&mdash;gave me a
+cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>At last we got to the police post, and, as we entered and passed through
+a dark stable passage, the gendarme on my left side, noticing my wrist
+watch, slyly detached it and pocketed it with a meaning smile. As the
+price of police protection I did not grudge it.</p>
+
+<p>Big doors clanged behind us and our captivity proper had begun: what had
+gone before had been more like a scrum at Rugger, with ourselves as the
+ball.</p>
+
+<p>We examined our injuries and bruises, and I tried to dress the wounds on
+the pilot's head, with little success, however, for our guardians could
+provide nothing but the most brackish water, and disinfectants were
+undreamed of. We discussed our future at some length, and agreed that
+our best plan was to be recaptured in Baghdad on the taking of that
+city. To this end we decided that it would be advisable to make the most
+of our injuries, so that when the Turkish retreat took place we would
+not be in a fit condition to accompany it. To feign sickness would not,
+indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> be difficult. I felt that every bone in my body was broken, and
+my pilot was in an even worse condition.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile there was a great clamour and "confused noises without," which
+seemed to refer insistently and unpleasantly to us. On asking what the
+people were saying, we were informed that the Arabs wanted to take our
+heads to the Turkish Commander-in-Chief at Suleiman Pak, whereas the
+gendarmes pointed out that there would be far greater profit and
+pleasure in taking us there alive. We cordially agreed, and did not join
+the discussion, feeling it to be more academic than practical, as we
+were quite safe in the police post.</p>
+
+<p>We had neither hats nor overcoats, but we each still retained our
+jackets and breeches, though in a very torn condition. I was still in
+possession of my sandshoes, probably because the Arabs did not think
+them worth the taking.</p>
+
+<p>Considering things calmly, we felt that we were lucky. This bondage
+would not last. We would surely fly again, perhaps soon. But for a week
+or so we must accustom ourselves to new conditions. Everything was
+strange about us, and it struck me at once how close a parallel there is
+between the drama of Captivity and the drama of Life. In each case there
+is a "curtain," and in each case a man enters into a new world whose
+language and customs he does not know. Almost naked we came to our
+bondage, dumb, bloody, disconcerted by the whole business. So, perhaps,
+do infants feel at the world awaiting their ken: it is taken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> for
+granted that they enjoy life, and so also our captors were convinced
+that we should feel delighted at our situation.</p>
+
+<p>"We saved you from the Arabs," we understood them to say, "and now you
+are safe until the war is over. You need do no more work."</p>
+
+<p>Such at any rate was my estimate of what they said, but being in an
+unknown tongue, it was only necessary to nod in answer.</p>
+
+<p>Tea was brought to us, sweet, weak tea in little glasses, and we made
+appreciative noises. Then the kindly gendarme&mdash;may he be rewarded in
+both worlds&mdash;brought each of us some cigarettes, in return for which we
+gave him our brightest smiles, having nothing else to give.</p>
+
+<p>But one could not smile for long in that little room, thinking of the
+sun and air outside and the old 'bus lying wrecked in the desert. We
+would have been flying back now; we would have reconnoitred the Turkish
+lines; we would have been back by nine o'clock to breakfast, bath, and
+glory. . . .</p>
+
+<p>"It's the thirteenth of the month," groaned the pilot, whose thoughts
+were similar to mine.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time I sulked in silence, while the pilot, with better
+manners or more vitality than I, engaged the gendarmes in light
+conversation, conducted chiefly by gesture. About an hour later (a "day"
+of the Creation, it seemed to me&mdash;and it was indeed a formative time,
+when the mind, so long accustomed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> range free, seeks to adjust its
+processes to captivity and adapt itself to new conditions of time and
+space) there occurred at last a diversion to interrupt my gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The Turkish District Governor arrived with two carriages to take us to
+Baghdad. He spoke English and was agreeable in a mild sort of way,
+except for his unfortunate habit of asking questions which we could not
+answer. He told us that news of our descent and capture had been sent to
+Baghdad by gallopers (not by telegram, I noted parenthetically) and that
+the population was awaiting our arrival. I said that I hoped the
+population would not be disappointed, and he assured us with a
+significant smile that they certainly would not.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever happens," he was kind enough to add, "I will be responsible
+for your lives myself."</p>
+
+<p>His meaning became apparent a little later, when we approached the
+suburbs of Baghdad and found an ugly crowd awaiting our arrival, armed
+with sticks and stones. When we reached the city itself the streets were
+lined as if for a royal procession. Shops had put up their shutters, the
+markets were closed, the streets were thronged, and every window held
+its quota of heads. The word had gone out that there was to be a
+demonstration, and the hysteria which lurks in every city in a time of
+crisis found its fullest scope. Our downfall was taken as an omen of
+British defeat, and the inhabitants of Baghdad held high holiday at the
+sight of captive British airmen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elderly merchants wagged their white beards and cursed us as we passed;
+children danced with rage, and threw mud; lines of Turkish women pulled
+back their veils in scorn, and putting out their tongues at us cried
+"La, la, la," in a curious note of derision; boys brandished knives;
+babies shook their little fists. No hated Tarquins could have had a more
+hostile demonstration. We were both spat upon. A man with a heavy cudgel
+aimed a blow at my pilot which narrowly missed him, another with a long
+dagger stabbed through the back of the carriage and was dragged away
+with difficulty: I can still see his snarling face and <i>hashish</i>-haunted
+eyes. Our escort could hardly force a way for our carriage through the
+narrow streets. All this time we sat trying to look dignified and
+smoking constant cigarettes. . . . State arrival of British prisoners in
+Baghdad&mdash;what a scene it would have been for the cinematograph!</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the river, a space was cleared round us, and we were embarked
+with a great deal of fuss in a boat to take us across to the Governor's
+palace. Before leaving, I said goodbye to the kindly gendarme who had
+helped a brother in distress, and once more now, across the wasted years
+of captivity and the turmoil of my life to-day, I grasp his hand in
+gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>Our first interview in Baghdad was with a journalist. He was very polite
+and anxious for our impressions, but I told him that the Arabs had given
+us quite enough impressions for the day, and that words could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> not
+adequately express what we felt at our arrival in Baghdad. We chiefly
+wanted a wash.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon we were taken to hospital, and to our surprise (for,
+being new to the conditions of captivity, we were still susceptible to
+surprise) we found that we were very well treated there. Two sentries,
+however, stood at our open door day and night to watch our every
+movement. When the Governor of Baghdad came to see us that evening
+(thoughtfully bringing with him a bottle of whisky) I politely told him
+(in French, a language he spoke fluently) that so much consideration had
+been shown to us that I hoped he would not mind my asking whether we
+could not have a little more privacy. The continual presence of the
+sentries was a little irksome. He understood my point perfectly&mdash;much
+too perfectly. Taking me to the window, he spoke smoothly, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry the sentries disturb you, but I feel responsible for your
+safety, and should you by any chance fall out of that window&mdash;it is not
+so very far from the ground, you see&mdash;you might get into bad hands. I
+assure you that Baghdad is full of wicked men."</p>
+
+<p>The Governor was too clever. There was no chance with him of securing
+more favourable conditions for escape, so we turned to the discussion of
+the whisky bottle. As in all else he did, he had an object, I soon
+discovered, in bringing this forbidden fluid. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> purpose, of course,
+was to make us talk, and talk we did, under its generous and
+unaccustomed influence, for it had been some time since we had seen
+spirits in our own mess at Azizieh. I would much like to see the report
+that the Turkish Intelligence Staff made of that wonderful conversation.
+Several officers had dropped in&mdash;casually&mdash;to join in the talk, and we
+told them we had lost our way; then our engine had stopped, and we
+landed as near to some village as we could. We knew nothing of an attack
+on Baghdad, we did not know General Townshend, but had certainly heard
+of him. We had heard a rumour that he had defeated the Turks at Es-sinn
+a month previously, and would like to know the truth of the matter.
+Eventually the bottle was exhausted, and so were our imaginations. We
+parted with the utmost cordiality and a firm intention of seeing as
+little of each other as possible in the future.</p>
+
+<p>In the street below our window were some large earthenware jars, like
+those in which the Forty Thieves had hidden aforetime in this very city,
+and for about a day we considered the story of Aladdin, in regard to the
+possibility of escape by getting into these jars; but just as we had
+made our plans the jars were removed, being taken no doubt to the
+support trenches, which were found by our troops excellently provided
+with water.</p>
+
+<p>As the day grew near for our attack, we saw many thousand Arabs being
+marched down to Ctesiphon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> It was no conquering army this, no freemen
+going to defend their native land, but miserable bands of slaves being
+sent into subjection. Down to the river bank, where they were embarked
+on lighters, they were followed by their weeping relatives. There was no
+pretence at heroism. They would have escaped if they could, but the
+Turks had taken care of that. They were tied together by fours, their
+right hand being lashed to a wooden yoke, while their left was employed
+in carrying a rifle. These unfortunate creatures were taken to a spot
+near the trenches and were then transferred, still securely tied
+together, to the worst dug and most-exposed part of the line. Machine
+guns were then posted behind them to block all possible lines of
+retreat. In addition to minor discomforts such as bearing the brunt of
+our attack, the Arabs, so I was told, were frequently unprovided with
+provisions and water, so it is small wonder that their demeanour did not
+show the fire of battle. But <i>Kannonen-futter</i> was required for
+Ctesiphon, and down the river this pageant of dejected pacifists had to
+go.</p>
+
+<p>After the attack had begun, shiploads of these same men returned
+wounded, and arrived in our hospital in an indescribably pitiable
+condition. There were no stretchers, and the wounded were left to shift
+for themselves, relying on charity and the providence of Allah. The
+blind led the blind, the halt helped the lame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Later, wounded Anatolian soldiers began also to arrive, and their plight
+was no less wretched than that of the Arabs, though their behaviour was
+incomparably better. One could not help admiring their stoicism in the
+face of terrible and often unnecessary suffering. The utter lack of
+system in dealing with casualties was hardly more remarkable than the
+fortitude of the casualties themselves. When a proclamation was read to
+the sufferers in our hospital, announcing the success of the Turkish
+arms at Ctesiphon, the wounded seemed to forget their pain and the dying
+acquired a new lease of life. I actually saw a man with a mortal wound
+in the head, who a few minutes previously had been choking and literally
+at his last gasp, rally all his forces to utter thanks to God, and then
+die.</p>
+
+<p>Never for a moment had we thought that the attack on Ctesiphon could
+fail. The odds, we knew, were heavily against us, but we firmly believed
+that General Townshend would achieve the impossible. That he did not do
+so was not his fault nor the fault of the gallant men he led. But this
+is a record of my personal experiences only, and I will spare the reader
+all the long reflections and alternations of anxiety and hope which held
+our thoughts while the guns boomed down the Tigris and the fate of
+Baghdad&mdash;and our fate&mdash;was poised in the balance.</p>
+
+<p>At six o'clock one morning we were suddenly awakened and told that we
+must leave for Mosul immediately. By every possible means in our power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+we delayed the start, thinking our troops might come at any moment. But
+the Turkish sergeant who commanded our escort had definite orders that
+we were to be out of the city by nine o'clock. We drove in a carriage
+through mean streets, attracting no attention, for now the Baghdadis
+realised their danger. Before leaving, our sergeant paid a visit to his
+house, in order to collect his kit, leaving us at the door, guarded by
+four soldiers. His sisters came down to see him off and (being of
+progressive tendencies, I suppose) they were not veiled. It were crime
+indeed to have hidden such lustrous eyes and skin so fair.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>A SHADOW-LAND OF ARABESQUES</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some breath of reality, some call from the outer world of freedom came
+to us from the presence of these girls. They seemed the first real
+people I had seen in my captivity, femininity incarnate, human beings in
+a shadow-land of arabesques. They were happy and healthy and somehow
+outside the insanities of our world. For a moment they gazed at us in
+awe, and for another moment in complete sympathy: then they retired with
+little squeaks of laughter and busied themselves with their brother's
+baggage.</p>
+
+<p>When our preparations were complete and we set off on our long journey,
+they stood for a space at the casement window and waved us goodbye,
+looking quite charming. I vowed that if Fate by a happy chance were to
+lead us back to Baghdad with r&ocirc;les reversed, so that they, not we, were
+captives in the midst of foes, my first care would be to repay their
+kindly, though unspoken, sympathy. They were too human for the
+futilities of war, too amiable to have a hand in Armageddon.</p>
+
+<p>Only prisoners, I think, see the full absurdity of war. Only prisoners,
+to begin with, fully realise the gift of life. And only prisoners see
+war without its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> glamour, and realise completely the suffering behind
+the lines: the maimed, the blind, the women who weep. Only by a few of
+us in happy England has the full tragedy of war been realised. Mere
+words will never record it, but prisoners know "the heartbreak in the
+heart of things." To us who have been behind the scenes, far from the
+shouting and the tumult and the captains and the kings, the wretchedness
+of it all remains indelible. Nothing can make us forget the broken men
+and women, whose woes will haunt our times.</p>
+
+<p>But I was on the threshold of my experiences then, and the maidens of
+Baghdad soon passed from memory, I fear&mdash;vanishing like the mists of
+morning that hung over the river-bank at the outset of our journey.</p>
+
+<p>We travelled in that marvellous conveyance, the <i>araba</i>. To generalise
+from types is dangerous, but the <i>araba</i> is certainly typical of Turkey.
+Its discomfort is as amazing as its endurance. It is a rickety cart with
+a mattress to sit on. A pole (frequently held together by string) to
+which two ponies are harnessed (frequently again with string) supplies
+the motive power, which is restrained by reins mended with string, or
+encouraged by a whip made of string. The contrivance is surmounted by a
+patchwork hood tied down with string. A few buckets and hay nets are
+strung between its crazy wheels. Such is the <i>araba</i>. How it holds
+together is a mystery as inscrutable as the East itself. If all the
+vitality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> expended in Turkey on starting upon a journey and continuing
+upon it were turned to other purposes, the land might flourish. But the
+philosophy which makes the <i>araba</i> possible makes other activities
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>A full two hours before the start, when the world is still blue with
+cold, travellers are summoned to leave their rest. Then the drivers
+begin to feed their ponies. When this is done they feed themselves.
+Then, leisurely, they load the baggage. Finally, when all seems ready,
+it occurs to somebody that it is impossible to leave before the cavalry
+escort is in saddle. "Ahmed Effendi" is called for. Everyone shouts for
+"Ahmed Effendi," who is sleeping soundly, like a sensible man. He wakes,
+and, to create a diversion perhaps, accuses a driver of stealing his
+chicken. The driver replies in suitable language. Meanwhile time passes.
+The disc of the sun cuts the horizon line of the desert, disclosing us
+all standing chill and cramped and bored and still unready. A pony has
+lain down in his harness, in an access of boredom, no doubt. A goat has
+stolen part of my scanty bread ration and is now browsing peacefully in
+the middle distance. Far away a cur is barking at the jackals. Some of
+our escort have retired to pray, others are still wrangling. Two or
+three are engaged in kicking the bored pony.</p>
+
+<p>After recovering from the goat my half-loaf, which is so much better
+than no bread in the desert, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> watch with amazement the Turkish
+treatment of the pony. A skewer is produced and rammed into the
+unfortunate animal's left nostril. So barbarous does this seem that I am
+on the point of protesting, when suddenly the animal struggles to its
+feet, and stands shivering and wide-eyed and apparently well again.
+After the wound has been sponged and the pony given a few dates, it
+seems equal to fresh endeavour. The blood-letting has cleared its
+brain&mdash;and no wonder, poor beast.</p>
+
+<p>At length all seems ready. We climb into the <i>araba</i>. But we are not off
+yet. We sit for another hour while the drivers refresh themselves with a
+second breakfast. A rhyme keeps running through my frozen brain:</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Slow pass the hours&mdash;ah, passing slow&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;My doom is worse than anything</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But I did not realise then how lucky we were to be travelling by
+carriages at all. Nor did I realise what an honour it was to be
+presented to the local governors through whose districts we passed. It
+was only late in captivity, when merged in an undistinguished band of
+prisoners, that I understood the pomp and circumstance of our early
+days. Late in 1915 a prisoner was still a new sort of animal to the
+Turks. They were curious about us, and to some extent the curiosity was
+mutual. One kept comparing them with the descriptions in "E&ouml;then."</p>
+
+<p>Proceedings generally opened in a long low room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> The local magnate sat
+at a desk, on which were set a saucer containing an inky sponge, a dish
+of sand, and some reed-pens. A scribe stood beside the <i>kaimakam</i> and
+handed him documents, which he scrutinised as if they were works of art,
+holding them delicately in his left hand as a connoisseur might consider
+his porcelain. Then with a reed-pen he would scratch the document, still
+holding it in the palm of his hand, and after sprinkling it carefully
+with sand would return it to the scribe. All this was incidental to his
+conversation with us or with other members of the audience. There were
+never less than ten people in any of the rooms in which we were
+interviewed, and as they all made fragmentary remarks, one quoting a
+text from the Koran, another a French <i>bon mot</i>, and a third introducing
+some question of local politics, and as the governor asked us questions
+and signed papers and kept up a running commentary with his friends, one
+felt exactly like Alice at the Hatter's tea party.</p>
+
+<p>"A Turk does not listen to what you are saying," I have since been told,
+"he merely watches your expression." That this is true of the uneducated
+I have no doubt, and if correct about the educated Turk I daresay it is
+not to his discredit. Demeanour in Oriental countries counts for much.</p>
+
+<p>But at Samarra our demeanour was sorely tried. We had been travelling
+about three days in the desert, when we arrived at this desolate and
+dishevelled spot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> I longed to lie down and shut my eyes, and forget
+about captivity for a bit, but no!&mdash;there came a summons to attend the
+ghastly social function I had already learned to loathe.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor of that place was a <i>tout &agrave; fait civilis&eacute;</i> Young Turk,
+sedentary, Semitic, and very disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true that you dropped bombs on the Mosque at Baghdad?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>And&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that the population of Baghdad nearly killed you?"</p>
+
+<p>And&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that in another month the English will be driven into the
+Persian Gulf?" . . . and so on.</p>
+
+<p>We denied these soft impeachments, and then his method became more
+direct.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of your friends have been killed and captured," he said&mdash;"the
+commandant of your flying corps, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing us incredulous, he accurately described the Major's appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"And there is someone else," the <i>kaimakam</i> continued in slow tones that
+iced my blood. "Someone who may be a friend of yours. A young pilot in a
+fur coat."</p>
+
+<p>My heart stood still.</p>
+
+<p>"He was killed by an Arab," the <i>kaimakam</i> added. . . .<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here I will skip a page or two of mental history. The defeat of my
+country, the death of my friend, the crumbling of my hopes: little
+indeed was left. . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>Let five dots supply the ugly blank. There is sorrow and failure enough
+in the world without speculating on tragedies that never happened.
+Baghdad was taken later, my friend proved to be captured, not killed,
+and I write this by Thames-side, not the Tigris.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of Samarra are, I believe, the most ill-balanced people
+in the world. This trait is well known to travellers, and we found it no
+traveller's tale. On first arriving at Samarra, we halted in the
+rest-house on the right bank of the river, and were enjoying our frugal
+meal of bread and dates when a sergeant came to us from the Governor
+with orders that we were to be instantly conveyed to his residence,
+which is situated in the town across the river. We demurred, and our own
+sergeant protested, but the Governor's emissary had definite orders, and
+we were hurried down in the twilight. Here we found that there was no
+boat to take us across. The Samarra sergeant shouted to a boatful of
+Arabs, floating down the river, but they would not stop. Louder and
+louder he shouted, till his voice cracked in a scream. Growing frantic
+with rage, he fired his revolver at the Arabs. Of course he missed them,
+but the bullets, ricochetting in the water, probably found a billet in
+the town beyond. The Arab occupants merely laughed in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> beards. We
+also laughed. Then the sergeant declared that we would have to swim, and
+we urged him in pantomime to show the way.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually he spied a horse-barge down river, with a naked boy playing
+beside it. Reloading his revolver, a few shots in his direction
+attracted the lad's attention. Then an old man came out of a hut by some
+melon beds, to see who was firing at his son.</p>
+
+<p>Another shot or two and the old man and the boy were prevailed upon to
+take us across. We had secured our transport at last, and the whole
+transaction seemed (in Samarra) as simple as hailing a taxi.</p>
+
+<p>I bought a melon from the boy, and he snatched my money contemptuously.
+To take things without violence is a sign of weakness in Samarra. I
+noticed afterwards that all the boys and girls in this happy spot were
+fighting each other or engaged in killing something. And their elders
+keep something of the feckless violence of youth. I do not think that
+there are any good Samarratans.</p>
+
+<p>After the interview with the Governor already mentioned, which ended by
+a refusal on our part to speak with him further, we were sent to pass
+the night in a filthy hovel, whose only furniture consisted of a bench
+and a chair. Our sergeant was sitting on this chair when an officer
+rushed in and jerked it from under him, leaving him on the floor. As a
+conjuring trick it was neat, but as manners, deplorable. We were glad to
+get away from the place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Very few incidents came to diversify the monotony of our desert travel.
+One day, however, we met some Turkish cavalry going down to the siege of
+Kut. They were a fine body of troops, a little under-mounted perhaps,
+but thoroughly business-like. Their officers were most chivalrous
+cavaliers. Here in the desert, where luxuries were not to be had for
+money or for murder, they frequently gave us a handful of cigarettes, or
+a parcel of raisins, or else halted their squadron and asked us to share
+their meal. With these men one felt at ease. They were soldiers like
+ourselves. They did not ask awkward questions, and were told no lies. I
+remember especially one afternoon in the Marble Hills when we sat in a
+ring drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, with the panorama of the
+desert spread out before us, from the southward plains of Arabia to the
+hills of the devil-worshippers, misty and mysterious, in the north. We
+talked about horses all the time. A modern Isaiah delivered himself of
+the following sentiment, in which I heartily concur:</p>
+
+<p>"Where there is no racing the people perish."</p>
+
+<p>The first-line Turk has many fine qualities, of which generosity and
+gallantry are not the least. Something in Anglo-Saxon blood is in
+sympathy with the adventure-loving, flower-loving Turk. But, alas! there
+is another type of Ottoman, with the taint of Tamerlane. "When he is
+good he is very very good, but when he is bad he is horrid."</p>
+
+<p>In the latter category I must regretfully place the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> sergeant who
+commanded our escort. He came of decent stock (to judge by his charming
+sisters, and his own appearance indeed) but his mind was all mud and
+blood. He had been Hunified. Turkey would always be fighting, he said.
+The English were almost defeated. The Armenians were almost
+exterminated. But the Greeks remained to be dealt with, and the cursed
+Arabs. Finally the Germans themselves. In an apotheosis of Prussianism
+Turkey was to turn on her Allies and drive them out. Such was his creed.
+But a glow of courage lit the dark places of his mind. He loved fighting
+for the sheer fun of the thing. A few days beyond Samarra we were
+attacked by some wandering Arabs, who swept down on us in a crescent.
+Our guards panicked, but he stood his ground, and, seizing a rifle,
+dispersed the enemy by some well-directed shots. Whether we were near
+deliverance or death on that occasion I do not know, but that the panic
+amongst our escort was not wholly unreasonable was evinced by the fact
+that only a few hours earlier we had passed the headless trunk of a
+gendarme, strapped upon a donkey. He had been decapitated as a warning
+to the Samarratans that two can play at the game of savagery.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the corpse had unnerved our guard, and as for myself, I did
+not know whether to be glad or sorry when the Arabs attacked us. To be
+taken by them meant either going back to the English or to the dust from
+which we came. The alternative was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> too heroic to be agreeable.
+Contrariwise, I was much disappointed when our sergeant finally drove
+them off. That evening, as if to point the moral, we found the body of
+another gendarme, also murdered, lying on a dung-heap outside the
+rest-house. This was at Shergat, the former capital of the Assyrians,
+and now a squalid village, where, however, the widows of Ashur were
+still "loud in their wail."</p>
+
+<p>Here we dined with the fattest man I have ever seen. He was really a pig
+personified, but as we both gobbled out of the same dish and ate the
+same salt, I will not further enlarge on his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>In the upper reaches of the Tigris there are wild geese so tame that
+they come waddling up to inspect the rare travellers through their land.
+I thought it might be possible to catch one of these animals on foot.
+Coquettishly enough they kept a certain distance. "We don't mind your
+looking at us," they seemed to say, "but we <i>do</i> object to being pawed
+about." With the coming of the railway I am afraid a gun will destroy
+their belief in human kind.</p>
+
+<p>The geese appeared to enjoy the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, which
+prevails in these regions. The whole country is rich in natural oils and
+bitumen. One day it will make somebody's fortune, no doubt, and then the
+geese will waddle away from perspiring prospectors. . . .</p>
+
+<p>Before we arrived at Mosul we stopped for a bath at the hot springs of
+Hammam-Ali, where we met (in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> the water) a patriarch with a white beard,
+who confidently assured us that he was a hundred years old and would
+continue to live for another hundred, such were the beneficent
+properties of the water. Before his days are numbered he may live to see
+a Hydro at Hammam-Ali&mdash;poor old patriarch. He told us a lot about Jonah
+(whose tomb is at Nineveh, just opposite Mosul, on the other side of the
+river), and I am not sure that he did not claim acquaintance with that
+patriarch. He was quite one of the family.</p>
+
+<p>Mosul, he told us, was a heaven on earth, a land flowing with milk and
+honey, where we should ride all day on the best horses of Arabia, and
+feast all night in gardens such as the blessed <i>houris</i> might adorn.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a certain elation, therefore, that I saw the distant
+prospect of Mosul next morning, set in its surrounding hills. A fair
+city it seemed, white and cool, with orange groves down to the river and
+many date-trees. But a closer acquaintance brought cruel disappointment,
+as generally happens in the East. The blight of the Ottoman was
+everywhere; there was dirt, decrepitude, and decay in every corner.
+Children with eye-disease, and adults with leprosies more terrible than
+Naaman's jostled each other in the mean streets. Whole quarters of the
+city had given up the ghost, and become refuse heaps, where curs grouted
+amongst offal. Mosul, like our escort-sergeant's mind, seemed a muddle
+of mud and blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With sinking hearts we drove to the barracks, and were shown into a
+dark, gloomy office, where our names were taken. Thence we were led to a
+still murkier and more mouldering room, inhabited&mdash;nay, infested&mdash;by
+some ten Arabs. Through this we passed into a cell with windows boarded
+up, which was, if possible even damper, darker, and more dismal than
+anything we had yet seen. After the sunlight and great winds of the
+desert we stood bewildered. Death seemed in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Then out of the gloom there rose two figures. They were British
+officers, who had been captured about a month previously. So changed and
+wasted were they that even after we had removed the boards from the
+little window we could hardly recognise them. One of these officers was
+so ill with dysentery that he could hardly move, the other had high
+fever.</p>
+
+<p>Our arrival, with news from the outer world, bad though it was,
+naturally cheered them considerably, for nothing could be worse than
+their present plight.</p>
+
+<p>The ensuing days called for a great moral effort on our part. It was
+absolutely imperative to laugh, otherwise our surroundings would have
+closed in on us. . . . We cut up lids of cigarette boxes for playing
+cards. We inked out a chessboard on a plank. We held a spiritualistic
+s&eacute;ance with a soup-bowl, there being no table available to turn. We told
+interminable stories. We composed monstrous limericks; and we sang in
+rivalry with the Arab guard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> outside, who made day hideous with their
+melody and murdered sleep by snoring.</p>
+
+<p>But when there is little to eat and nothing to do, time drags heavily.
+Two cells with low ceilings that leaked were allotted to the four of us.
+In these we lived and ate and slept, except for fortnightly excursions
+to the baths. We were allowed no communication with the men, who lived
+in a dungeon below. Their fate was a sealed book to us. We had nothing
+to read. Under these conditions one begins to fear one's brain,
+especially at night. It was then that it began to run like a mechanical
+toy. Like a clockwork mouse, it scampered aimlessly amongst the dust of
+memory, then suddenly became inert, with the works run down. I grew
+terrified of thinking, especially of thinking about my friend in the fur
+coat.</p>
+
+<p>The night hours are the worst in captivity. One lies on the floor,
+waiting for sleep to come, but instead of blessed sleep, "beloved from
+pole to pole," thoughts come crowding thick and fast on consciousness,
+thoughts like clouds that lower over the quiescent body. Each second
+then seems of inconceivable duration. But there is no escape from Time.</p>
+
+<p>During the day, however, things were more bearable, and occasional
+gleams of humour enlivened the laggard moments.</p>
+
+<p>Among our guard there were several sentries who (I thought) might
+conceivably help us to escape. One dark night, one of these men
+whispered the one word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> "Jesus," and made the sign of the Cross, as I
+passed him. After this introduction I naturally hoped that he might be
+of use. He was a fine figure of a man, with a proud poise of head, and
+aquiline nose, as if some Assyrian god had been his ancestor. I was
+gazing at him in admiration the next day, and gauging his possibilities
+through my single eye-glass, when a curious thing happened.</p>
+
+<p>Our eyes met. He seemed mesmerised by my monocle. For a long time we
+stared at each other in silence, then, thinking the sergeant of the
+guard would notice our behaviour, I discreetly dropped my eye-glass and
+looked the other way. The sentry's mouth quivered as if I had made a
+joke, but instead of smiling, he burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
+The sergeant of the guard (a swart, sturdy little Turk) rushed out to
+see what had happened. There was the big sentry, wailing, and actually
+gnashing his white teeth. I stood awkwardly, looking as innocent as I
+felt. The sergeant bristled like a terrier, pulled the sentry's poor
+nose, and boxed his beautiful ears, while the victim continued to
+blubber and look piteously in my direction.</p>
+
+<p>But I could not help him at all. I had not the slightest idea what was
+the matter, nor do I know now. Hysteria, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually that great solvent of perplexity, nicotine, came to relieve
+the awkward situation. First the sergeant accepted a cigarette, then,
+more diffidently,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> the sentry. Later I put in my eye-glass again, and
+convinced them, I think, that its use did not involve the weaving of any
+unholy spell.</p>
+
+<p>This eye-glass, by the way, survived all the fortunes of captivity.
+Through it I surveyed the moon-lit plains beyond the Tigris when I
+planned escape in Mosul, as shall be told in the next chapter. Later it
+scanned the desert's dusty face for any hope of release. At
+Afion-kara-hissar it helped me search for a pathway through our guards.
+At Constantinople it was still my friend. Through it, a month before
+escape, I looked at the slip of new moon that swung over San Sophia on
+the last day of Ramazan, wondering where the next moon would find me.
+And when the next moon came, I watched the sentries by its aid, on the
+night of our first escape. And it was in my eye when I slipped down the
+rope to freedom.</p>
+
+<p>But this chapter is getting "gaga." It has a happy ending, however.</p>
+
+<p>One evening when the</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">". . . little patch of blue,</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;That prisoners call the sky"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>had turned to sulky mauve, and the air was heavy with storm, and our
+fellow-prisoners were depressed, and the Arab guard was bellowing songs
+outside, and we were peeling potatoes for our dinner by the flicker of
+lamp-light, and life seemed drab beyond description, there came great
+news to us. Two other officers had arrived.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Next moment they peered into our den, even as we had done. And they were
+angry, amazed, unshaven, bronzed by the desert air, even as we had been.
+There in the doorway, ruddy and fair and truculent like some Viking out
+of time and place, stood the young pilot I had last seen at Aziziah. He
+was alive, my friend in the fur coat.</p>
+
+<p>The desert had delivered up its dead!</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TERRIBLE TURK</h3>
+
+
+<p>One draws a long breath thinking of those days of Mosul. But bad as our
+case was, it was as nothing compared with that of the men.</p>
+
+<p>Some two hundred of them lived in a cellar below our quarters, through
+scenes of misery, and in an atmosphere of death which no one can
+conceive who does not know the methods of the Turk. Even to me, as I
+write in England, that Mosul prison begins to seem inconceivable.
+Huddled together on the damp flag-stones of the cellar, our men died at
+the rate of four or five a week. Although the majority were suffering
+from dysentery they not only could not secure medical attention, but
+were not even allowed out of their cells for any purpose whatever. Their
+pitiable state can be better imagined than described. Many went mad
+under our eyes. Deprived of food, light, exercise, and sometimes even
+drinking water, the condition of our sick and starving men was literally
+too terrible for words.</p>
+
+<p>It is useless, however, to pile horror on horror. Sixty per cent. of
+these men are dead, and this fact speaks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> for itself. No re-statement
+can strengthen, and no excuse can palliate, the case against the Turks.
+Our men in this particular instance were killed by the cynical brutality
+of Abdul Ghani Bey, the commandant of Mosul, and his acquiescent staff.</p>
+
+<p>There is an idea that "the Turks treated their own soldiers no better
+than our prisoners"; but this is a fallacy&mdash;at any rate with regard to
+hell-hounds such as Abdul Ghani Bey. He took an especial pleasure in
+inflicting the torments of thirst, hunger, and dirt upon the miserable
+beings under his care. Animals, in another country, would have been kept
+cleaner and better fed.</p>
+
+<p>Never shall I forget the arrival in January 1915 of a party of English
+prisoners from Baghdad. About two hundred and fifty men, who had been
+captured on barges just before the siege of Kut, had been taken first to
+Baghdad and thence by forced marches to Kirkuk, a mountain town on the
+borders of the Turko-Persian frontier. Why they were ever sent to Kirkuk
+I do not know, unless indeed it was thought that the sight of prisoners
+suitably starved would re-assure the population regarding the qualities
+of the redoubtable English soldier. After being exhibited to the
+population of Kirkuk our men continued their journey, through the bitter
+cold of the mountains, barefoot and in rags, arriving at last at Mosul
+shortly after the New Year. Only eighty men then remained out of the
+original two hundred and fifty, but although<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> their numbers had dwindled
+their courage had not diminished.</p>
+
+<p>First there marched into our barrack square some sixty of our soldiers
+in column of route. They were erect and correct as if they were marching
+to a king's parade. Surely so strange a column will never be seen again.
+All were sick, and the most were sick to death. Some were barefoot, some
+had marched two hundred miles in carpet slippers, some were in
+shirt-sleeves, and all were in rags; one man only wore a great-coat, and
+he possessed no stitch of clothing beneath it. But through all adversity
+they held their heads high among the heathen, and carried themselves
+with the courage of a day "that knows not death." Silently they filed
+into the already crowded cellar, out of our sight, and many never issued
+again into the light of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>After these sixty men had disappeared the stragglers began to stagger
+in. One man, delirious, led a donkey on which the dead body of his
+friend was tied face downwards. After unstrapping the corpse he fell in
+a heap beside it. Dysentery cases wandered in and collapsed in groups on
+the parade ground. An Indian soldier, who had contracted lockjaw, kept
+making piteous signs to his mouth, and looking up to the verandah, where
+we stood surrounded by guards. But no one came to relieve those
+sufferers, dying by inches under our eyes.</p>
+
+<p>That night we managed, by bribing the guards, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> have smuggled upstairs
+to us at tea-time two non-commissioned officers from among the new
+arrivals. Needless to say, we spent all our money (which was little
+enough in all conscience) in providing as good a fare as possible, and
+our famished guests devoured the honey and clotted cream we had to
+offer. Then one of them suddenly fainted. When he had somewhat recovered
+he had to be secretly conveyed below, and that was the end of the
+party&mdash;the saddest at which I have ever assisted. The officer who
+carried the sick man down spent several hours afterwards in removing
+vermin from his own clothes, for lice leave the moribund, and this poor
+boy died within a few days.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when our pay was given us, or there occurred an opportunity
+to bribe our guard, it was our heart-breaking duty to decide which of
+the men we should attempt to save, by smuggling money to them out of the
+slender funds at our disposal, and which of their number, from cruel
+necessity, were too near their end to warrant an attempt to save.</p>
+
+<p>Something of the iron of Cromwell enters one's mind as one writes of
+these things. If we forget our dead, the East will not forget our shame.
+Sentiment must not interfere with justice. Abdul Ghani Bey, who shed our
+prisoners' blood, must pay the penalty. He is the embodiment of a
+certain type&mdash;perhaps not a very common type&mdash;of Turk, but common or
+not, he is one of the men responsible for the terrible death-rate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> among
+our soldiers. A short description of him, therefore, will not be out of
+place.</p>
+
+<p>He was a small man, this tiny Tamerlane, with a limp, and a scowl, and
+bandy legs. His sombre, wizened face seemed to light with pleasure at
+scenes of cruelty and despair. He insulted the old, and struck the weak,
+and delighted in the tears of women and the cries of children. This is
+not hyperbole. I have seen him stump through a crowd of Armenian widows
+and their offspring, and after striking some with his whip, he pushed
+down a woman into the gutter who held a baby at her breast. I have seen
+him pass down the ranks of Arab deserters, lashing one in the face,
+kicking another, and knocking down a third. I have seen him wipe his
+boots on the beard of an old Arab he had felled, and spur him in the
+face. I hope he has already been hanged, because only the hangman's cord
+could remove his atavistic cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>His subordinates went in deadly fear of him, and while it was extremely
+difficult to help our men, it was practically impossible to help
+ourselves at all in the matter of escape. Yet escape was doubly urgent
+now, to bring news of our condition to the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>After much thought I decided that a certain wall-eyed interpreter who
+came occasionally to buy us food was the most promising person to
+approach. My friend and I laid our plans carefully. After a judicious
+tip, and some hints as to our great importance in our own country, we
+evinced a desire to have private<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> lessons with him in Arabic, enlarging
+at the same time upon the great career that a person like himself might
+have had, had he been serving the English and not the Turks. Gradually
+we led round to the subject of escape. At first we talked generalities
+in whispers, and he was distinctly shy of doing anything of which the
+dear commandant would not approve; but eventually, softly and
+distinctly, and with a confidence that I did not feel, I made a
+momentous proposal to him, nothing less than that he could help us to
+escape. He winced as if my remark was hardly proper, and fixed me with a
+single, thunder-struck eye. Then he quavered:</p>
+
+<p>"This is very sudden!"</p>
+
+<p>We could not help laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"This is no jesting matter," he said. "I will be killed if I am caught."</p>
+
+<p>"But you won't get caught. With the best horses in Arabia and a guide
+like you. . . ."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush! I must think it over."</p>
+
+<p>For several days he preserved a tantalising silence, alternately raising
+our hopes by a wink from his wonderful eye, and then dashing them to the
+ground by a blank stare.</p>
+
+<p>We lived in a torment of hope deferred.</p>
+
+<p>But time passed more easily now. The nights took on a new complexion,
+flushed by the hope of freedom. From our little window I could see
+across a courtyard to a patch of river. Beyond it, immense and magical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+under the starlight, were the ruins of former civilisation&mdash;the mounds
+of Nineveh, the tomb of Jonah, and the rolling downs that lead to the
+mountains of Kurdistan. To those mountains my fancy went. If sleep did
+not come, then there were enthralling adventures to be lived in those
+mountains, adventures of the texture of dreams, yet tinged with a
+certain prospective of reality. . . . We had bought revolvers, our
+horses were ready, we had bribed our guard. We rode far and fast, with
+our wall-eyed friend as guide. By evening we were in a great
+forest. . . .</p>
+
+<p>But reality proved a poor attendant on romance. A sordid question of
+money was our stumbling-block, and a high enterprise was crippled&mdash;not
+for the first or last time&mdash;by want of cash. We had already given the
+interpreter five pounds (which represented so much bread taken out of
+our mouths), but now he stated that further funds were indispensable to
+arrange preliminaries. This seemed reasonable, for arms and horses could
+not be secured on credit in Mosul. Unfortunately, however, funds were
+not available. We could not, in decency, borrow from other prisoners to
+help us in our escape. At this juncture our guide, philosopher, and
+friend lost&mdash;or embezzled&mdash;a five-pound note that had been entrusted to
+him by another prisoner to buy us food. Whether he lost it carelessly or
+criminally I am not prepared to state, but the fact remains he lost it.
+Our fellow-prisoner very naturally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> complained to the Turks, as the
+absence of this five pounds meant we could buy no food for a week.</p>
+
+<p>The Turks arrested the interpreter. He grew frightened, invented a story
+about the complainant having asked him to help in an escape, then
+recanted, vacillated, contradicted himself, and got himself bastinadoed
+for his pains.</p>
+
+<p>The bastinado, I may as well here explain, is administered as follows:
+the feet of the victim are bared, and his ankles are strapped to a pole.
+The pole is now raised by two men to the height of their shoulders. A
+third man takes a thick stick about the diameter of a man's wrist, and
+strikes him on the soles of the feet. Between twenty and a hundred
+strokes are administered, while the victim writhes until he faints. No
+undue exertion is necessary on the part of the executioner, for even
+after a gentle bastinado a man is not expected to be able to walk for
+several days.</p>
+
+<p>The wall-eyed interpreter was brought limping to our cell about three
+days after his punishment. He was brought by Turkish officers, who
+wished to hear from our own lips a denial of his story that we had been
+plotting an escape.</p>
+
+<p>It was a dramatic, and for me rather dreadful, moment. Indignantly and
+vehemently we denied ever having asked his help. Only myself and
+another, besides the interpreter, knew the truth. To the other officers
+at Mosul (there were nine of us then, sharing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> two little cells) this
+black business is only now for the first time made known. Their
+indignation, therefore, was by no means counterfeit.</p>
+
+<p>"The man must be mad. No one ever dreamed of escaping," I stated,
+looking fixedly into the interpreter's one eye, which, while it implored
+me to tell the truth, seemed to hold a certain awe for a liar greater
+than himself.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" he stammered, cowed by the circumstance that for once in his
+life he was telling the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"But what?" we demanded angrily. "Let the villain speak out. His story
+is monstrous."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, we are so comfortable here," I added parenthetically.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually the wretched man was led gibbering to an underground dungeon.
+What happened to him afterwards I do not know. I publish this story
+after careful thought, because, if he was "playing the game" by us, why
+did he talk to the Turks about escape? If, on the other hand, he was a
+prison spy, then his punishment is not my affair.</p>
+
+<p>The treachery of the interpreter was an ill wind for everyone, for our
+guards were sent away to the front (which is tantamount to a sentence of
+death) and the vigilance of our new guards was greater than that of the
+old. Intrigue was dead and our isolation complete.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances it may be imagined with what excitement I
+received the news that the German<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> Consul wanted to see me in the
+commandant's office. It was the first time for a fortnight that I had
+left my cell.</p>
+
+<p>I entered slowly, and after saluting the company present, first
+generally, and then individually, I took a dignified seat after the
+manner of the country. Ranged round the room were various notables of
+Mosul&mdash;doctors, apothecaries, priests, and lawyers. On a dais slightly
+above us sat the Consul and the commandant. For some time we kept
+silence, as if to mark the importance of the occasion. Then a cigarette
+was offered me by the commandant. I refused this offering, rising in my
+chair and saluting him again.</p>
+
+<p>At last the German Consul spoke.</p>
+
+<p>He had been instructed by telegraph, he told me, to pay me the sum of
+five hundred marks in gold. The money came from a friend of my father's.
+I begged him to thank the generous donor, and a whole vista of
+possibilities immediately rose to my mind.</p>
+
+<p>The money would be given me next day, the Consul continued, and a
+<i>kavass</i> of the Imperial Government would go with me into the <i>bazaar</i>
+to make any purchases I required.</p>
+
+<p>This conversation took place in French, a language of which the
+commandant was quite ignorant, and I saw that here was an ideal
+opportunity for bringing the plight of our prisoners to light. But the
+Consul, I gathered, wanted to keep on friendly terms with the Turks.
+Some of the things I told him, however, made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> him open his eyes, and may
+have made his kultured flesh creep.</p>
+
+<p>"I will come again to-morrow," he said hurriedly&mdash;"you can tell me more
+then."</p>
+
+<p>After this he spoke in Turkish at some length to the commandant, while
+the latter interjected that wonderful word <i>yok</i> at intervals.</p>
+
+<p><i>Yok</i>, I must explain, signifies "No" in its every variation, and is
+probably the most popular word in Turkish. It is crystallised
+inhibition, the negation of all energy and enthusiasm, the motto of the
+Ottoman Dilly and Dallys. Its only rival in the vocabulary is <i>yarin</i>,
+which means "to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Yok, yok, yok," said the commandant, and I gathered that he was
+displeased.</p>
+
+<p>That night I made my plans, and when summoned to the office next day I
+was armed with three documents. The first was a private letter of thanks
+to Baron Mumm for his generous and kindly loan. The second was a
+suggestion that the International Red Cross should immediately send out
+a commission to look after our prisoners at Mosul. And the third was a
+detailed list of articles required by our men, with appropriate
+comments. Items such as this figured on the list:</p>
+
+<p>Soap, for two hundred men, as they had been unable to wash for months.</p>
+
+<p>Kerosene tins, to hold drinking-water, which was denied to our
+prisoners.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Blankets, as over 50 per cent. had no covering at all.</p>
+
+<p>These screeds startled the company greatly. The Consul stared and the
+commandant glared, for the one hated fuss and the other hated me. I was
+delightfully unpopular, but when an Ambassador telegraphs in Turkey, the
+provinces lend a respectful ear. My voice, crying in the wilderness,
+must needs be heard.</p>
+
+<p>Summoning an interpreter, the commandant demanded whether I had any
+cause for complaint; whereupon the following curious three-cornered
+conversation took place&mdash;so far as I could understand the Turkish part:</p>
+
+<p>"The men must be moved to better quarters," said I. "Until this is
+arranged nothing can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"He says nothing can be done," echoed the interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>"Then of what does he complain?" asked the commandant.</p>
+
+<p>"The very beasts in my country are better cared for," I said. "Our men
+are dying of hunger and cold."</p>
+
+<p>"He says the men are dying of cold," said the interpreter, shivering at
+his temerity in mentioning the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"The weather is not my fault," grumbled the commandant, "perhaps it will
+be better to-morrow. Yes, <i>yarin</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And so on. Talk was hopeless, but before leaving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> I gave the German
+Consul to understand that he now shared with Abdul Ghani Bey the
+responsibility for our treatment. To his credit, be it said, the
+commandant was removed shortly after our departure.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after this interview we were moved from Mosul, where our
+presence was becoming irksome no doubt. Before leaving I left all my
+fortunate money, except five pounds, with the Consul, asking him to form
+a fund (which I hoped would be supplemented later by the Red Cross) for
+sick prisoners. Twelve months later this money was returned to me in
+full, but I fancy that it had done its work in the meanwhile.</p>
+
+<p>On the day before our journey I went shopping with the Imperial <i>kavass</i>
+aforesaid, and it was a most pompous and pleasant excursion. Although I
+wore sandshoes and tattered garments, what with my eyeglass, and the
+gorgeous German individual, dressed like a Bond Street <i>commissionaire</i>,
+who carried my parcels and did my bargaining, I think we made a great
+impression upon the good burgesses of Mosul.</p>
+
+<p>We threaded our way among Kurds with seven pistols at their belts, and
+Arabs hung with bandoliers, and astonishing Circassians with whiskers
+and swords. Almost every male swaggered about heavily armed, but a blow
+on their bristling midriff would have staggered any one of them. Their
+bark, I should think, is worse than their bite.</p>
+
+<p>After a Turkish bath, where I graciously entertained the company with
+coffee, we strolled round the transport<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> square, where we chaffered
+hotly for carriages to take us to Aleppo.</p>
+
+<p>The material results of the morning were:</p>
+
+<p>Some food and tobacco for the men staying behind.</p>
+
+<p>Rations for ourselves, consisting of an amorphous mass of dates,
+cigarettes, conical loaves of sugar, candles, and a heap of unleavened
+bread.</p>
+
+<p>Carriages for our conveyance to Aleppo.</p>
+
+<p>But the moral effect of our excursion was greater far. I sowed broadcast
+the seeds of disaffection to Abdul Ghani Bey. To the tobacconist I said
+that the English, Germans, Turks, and all the nations of the earth,
+while differing in other matters, had agreed he was a worm to be crushed
+under the heel of civilisation. To the grocer I repeated the story. To
+the fruiterer I said his doom was nigh, and to the baker and candlestick
+maker that his hour had come.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone agreed. <i>Conspuez le commandant</i> was the general opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"In good old Abdul Hamid's days," they said, "such devil's spawn would
+not have been allowed to live."</p>
+
+<p>It was a matter of minutes before rumours of his downfall were rife
+throughout the city.</p>
+
+<p>Next day he came to see us off, bow-legs, whip, and scowl and all. He
+stood stockily, watching us drive away, and then turned and spat. But
+the taste of us was not to be thus easily dispelled. He will remember
+us, I hope, to his dying day. May that day be soon!</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>"OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION. . . ."</h3>
+
+
+<p>We had left a sad party of prisoners behind us, alas! but we had done
+what little we could for them. Confined as we had been, their sufferings
+had only added to our own. The best hope for them lay in the German
+Consul. He could do more, if he wished, than we could have achieved for
+all our wishes. Nothing could have been more hopeless than our position
+at Mosul. But now at least there was the open road before us, and hope,
+and health.</p>
+
+<p>The desert air is magnificent. The untamed winds seemed to blow through
+every fibre of one's being, and clear away the cobwebs of captivity. The
+swinging sun, the great spaces of sand, the continuous exercise, and the
+lean diet of dates and bread, produce a feeling of perfect health.
+Indeed, after a day or two I began to feel much too well to be a
+prisoner. Under the desert stars one thought of the lights of London.
+Perversely, instead of being grateful for the unfettered grandeur of
+one's surroundings, one thought regretfully of the crowded hours one
+spends among civilised peoples. And, oh, how tired I was of seeing
+nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> but men! One of the worst features of captivity is that it is
+generally a story without a heroine.</p>
+
+<p>After the second day of travel I was really seriously in need of a
+heroine, for my friend had developed high fever. If only there had been
+a ministering angel among our party! I did my best, but am not a nurse
+by nature. My friend grew so weak that he could not stand; and I began
+to doubt whether he would get to our journey's end.</p>
+
+<p>But although no heroine came to our help, a hero did. As he happens to
+be a Turk, I will describe him shortly. Let us call him the Boy Scout,
+for he did (not one, but many) good actions every day. Out of his valise
+he produced a phial of brandy, tea, sugar, raisins, and some invaluable
+medicines. All these he pressed us to accept. He even tried to make me
+believe that he could spare a box of Bir-inji (first-class) cigarettes,
+until I discovered he had no more for himself. At every halting place he
+went to search for milk for my friend. Until we had been provided for,
+he never attended to his own comforts. After eighty miles of travelling
+everyone is tired, but although the Boy Scout must have been as tired as
+any of us, for he rode instead of driving, and although he had no
+official position with regard to us, no brother officer could have been
+more helpful or more truly kind. From the moment of our meeting we had
+been attracted by each other. At times, a look or an inflection of voice
+will proclaim a kindred spirit in a perfect stranger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> Something happens
+above our consciousness; soul speaks to soul perhaps. So it was with the
+Boy Scout. He was unknown to me when I first saw him, dark-eyed and
+graceful, riding a white horse like a prince in a fairy book, and we
+spoke no common language, but somehow we understood each other.</p>
+
+<p>He was a high official, I afterwards heard, travelling incognito, and
+had been engaged on Intelligence work for his country in Afghanistan.
+But, although an enemy in theory, he was a friend in fact. The war was
+far. Here in the desert we met as brothers. A finer figure of a man I
+have rarely seen, nor a truer gentleman. He was an ardent Young Turk,
+and if other Young Turks were cast in such a mould, there would be a
+place in the world for the race of Othman. But I have never seen another
+like him.</p>
+
+<p>His manners were perfect, and although we discussed every subject under
+the sun in snatches of French and broken bits of Persian, we always
+managed to avoid awkward topics such as atrocities, reprisals, and the
+like. He guessed, I think, that I often thought of escape, and said one
+day:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall fully understand if you try to get away, but you will forgive
+me, won't you, if I use my revolver?"</p>
+
+<p>I assured him I would.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" he laughed, "because I am a dead shot!"</p>
+
+<p>One day we must meet again, and pick up the threads of talk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At Ress-el-Ain we separated for a time, and my friend was carried into
+the train, where he lay down and took no further interest in the
+proceedings. I also lay down, exhausted by anxiety. I was glad to be
+quit of the desert. Under other conditions it might have been charming,
+but its glamour is invisible to a captive's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The train journey was not very interesting, except for the fact that our
+guard commander (excited perhaps by the approach to civilisation, or
+else because he was free from the restraining influence of our teetotal
+Boy Scout) purchased a bottle of <i>'araq</i> and imbibed it steadily on the
+journey between Ress-el-Ain and Djerablisse.</p>
+
+<p><i>'Araq</i>, the reader must know, is otherwise known as <i>mastic</i> or
+<i>douzico</i>, and is a colourless alcohol distilled from raisins and
+flavoured with aniseed, which clouds on admixture with water, and tastes
+like cough-mixture. It is an intoxicant without the saving grace of more
+generous vintages. It inebriates but does not cheer.</p>
+
+<p>At Djerablisse, on the Euphrates, our guard commander supplemented the
+fiery <i>'araq</i> with some equally potent German ration rum. By the time we
+got to Aleppo next day, he was reeking of this blend of alcohols. Not
+all the perfumes of Arabia could have stifled its fumes, nor all the
+waters of Damascus have quenched his thirst. He was besotted.</p>
+
+<p>Escape would have been possible then. We had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> become separated from the
+rest of our party and were in charge of one old, sleepy, and rather
+friendly soldier. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind as to where
+we should pass the night, but we eventually arrived at a small and clean
+Turkish hotel, where we were told, rather mysteriously, that we should
+be among friends.</p>
+
+<p>I looked for friends, but as everyone was asleep, it being then two
+o'clock in the morning, I decided to have a good night's rest before
+making any plans. Our dainty bedroom was too tempting to be ignored. The
+curtains were of Aleppo-work, in broad stripes of black and gold. The
+rafters were striped in black and white. The walls were dead white, the
+furniture dead black. Three pillows adorned our beds, of black, and of
+crimson, and of brilliant blue, each with a white slip covering half
+their length. The bed-covers were black, worked with gold dragons. It
+was like a room one imagines in dreams, or sees at the Russian Ballet.</p>
+
+<p>After a blissful night, between sheets, and on a spring mattress, tea
+was brought to us in bed, and immediately afterwards, as no guards
+seemed to be about, I rose, greatly refreshed, and dressed in haste. My
+idea was to order a carriage to drive us to the sea-coast at Mersina,
+from which place I felt sure it would be possible to charter a boat to
+Cyprus.</p>
+
+<p>But these hasty plans were dispelled by finding the Boy Scout waiting
+for me in the passage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your guard commander was ill," he explained, "so I arranged that you
+should be brought to this hotel, where you are my guests. And I want you
+to lunch with me at one o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>My face fell, but of course there was no help for it. And the Boy
+Scout's hospitality was princely indeed.</p>
+
+<p>After delicious hors-d'oeuvres (the <i>m&eacute;z&eacute;</i>&mdash;as it is called in
+Turkey&mdash;is a national dish) and soup, and savoury meats, we refreshed
+our palates with bowls of curds and rice. Then we attacked the sweets,
+which were melting morsels of honey and the lightest pastry. After
+drinking the health of the invalid (who could not join us of course) in
+Cyprian wine, we adjourned to the Boy Scout's room for coffee and
+cigarettes. Here I found all his belongings spread out, including
+several tins of English bully-beef and slabs of chocolate, which he said
+was his share of the loot taken after our retirement at the Dardanelles.
+He begged us to help ourselves to everything we wanted in the way of
+food or clothing; and he was ready, literally, to give us his last
+shirt. After having fitted us out, he telephoned to the hospital about
+the patient, and made arrangements that he should be received that
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Some hours later, accordingly, I drove to the hospital with my friend,
+accompanied by two policemen who had arrived from district headquarters,
+no doubt at the Boy Scout's request.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We were met at the entrance of the hospital by two odd little doctors.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with him?" squeaked Humpty in French.</p>
+
+<p>"Fever," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Fever, indeed!" answered Dumpty, "let's look at his chest."</p>
+
+<p>"And at his back," added Humpty suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>My friend disrobed, shivering in the sharp air, and these two strange
+physicians glared at him, standing two yards away, while the Turkish
+soldier and I supported the patient.</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't got it," they said suddenly in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Typhus, of course. Carry him in. He will be well in a week."</p>
+
+<p>I doubted it, but the situation did not admit of argument. We carried
+him in, through a crowd of miserable men in every stage of disease, all
+clamouring for admittance. No one, I gathered, was allowed into that
+hospital merely for the dull business of dying. They could do that as
+well outside. Thankful for small mercies, therefore, I left my friend in
+the clutches of Humpty and Dumpty, and even as they had predicted, he
+was well within a week.</p>
+
+<p>There is something rather marvellous about a Turkish doctor's diagnosis.
+Such trifles as the state of your temperature or tongue are not
+considered. They trust in the Lord and give you an emetic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> Although
+unpleasant, their methods are often efficacious.</p>
+
+<p>It was now my turn to fall ill, and I did it with startling suddenness
+and completeness. I was sitting at the window of the house in which we
+were confined in Aleppo, feeling perfectly well, when I began to shiver
+violently. In half an hour I was in a high fever. That night I was taken
+to Humpty and Dumpty. Next morning I was unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>I will draw a veil over the next month of my life. Only two little
+incidents are worth recording.</p>
+
+<p>The first occurred about a week after my admittance to hospital, when my
+disease, whatever it was, had reached its crisis. A diet of emetics is
+tedious, so also is the companionship of people suffering from <i>delirium
+tremens</i> when one wants to be quiet. An end, I felt, must be made of the
+present situation. Creeping painfully out of my bed, I went down the
+passage, holding against the wall for support. It was a dark, uneven
+passage, with two patches of moonlight from two windows at the far end.
+Near one of these pools of light I caught my foot in a stone, and
+slipped and fell. I was too weak to get up again. I cooled my head on
+the stones and wondered what would happen next. Then I began to think of
+seas and rivers. All the delightful things I had ever done in water kept
+flitting through my mind. I remembered crouching in the bow of my
+father's cat-boat as we beat up a reach to Salem (Massachusetts) with
+the spray in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> faces. And I thought of the sparkling sapphire of the
+Mediterranean and the cool translucencies of Cuckoo-weir. . . . No one
+came to disturb my meditations. The moonlight shifted right across my
+body, and slowly, slowly, I felt the wells of consciousness were filling
+up again. I was, quite definitely, coming back to life. It was as if I
+had really been once more in America and Italy and by the Thames, living
+again in all memories connected with open waters, and as if their solace
+had somehow touched me. Their coolness had cured me, and I was now
+flying back through imperceptible ether to Aleppo. I was coming back to
+that passage in a Turkish hospital. . . .</p>
+
+<p>Did I draw, I wonder, upon some banked reserve of vitality, or were my
+impressions a common phase of illness? Anyway, when I came to, I was a
+different man. The waters of the world had cured me.</p>
+
+<p>Later, during the journey to Afion-kara-hissar, I had a relapse. This
+second incident of my illness was a spiritual experience. Having been
+carried by my friend to the railway station, I collapsed on the
+platform, while he was momentarily called away. So dazed and helpless
+was I that I lay inconspicuously on some sacks, a bundle of skin and
+bone that might not have been human at all. Some porters threw more
+sacks on the pile and I was soon almost covered. But I lay quite still:
+I was too tired to move or to cry out. As bodily weakness increased, so
+there came to me a sense of mental power, over and beyond my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> poor
+endowments. I thrilled to this strange strength, which seemed to mount
+to the very throne of Time, where past and future are one. Call it a
+whimsy of delirium if you will, nevertheless, one of the scenes I saw in
+the cinema of clairvoyance was a scene that actually happened some three
+months later, at that same station where I lay. . . . I saw some hundred
+men, prisoners from Kut and mostly Indians, gathered on the platform.
+One of these men was sitting on this very heap of sacks; he was sitting
+there rocking himself to and fro in great agony, for one of the guards
+had struck him with a thick stick and broken his arm. But not only was
+his arm broken, the spirit within him (which I also saw) was shattered
+beyond repair. No hope in life remained: he had done that which is most
+terrible to a Hindu, for he had eaten the flesh of cows and broken the
+ordinances of caste. His companions had died in the desert without the
+lustral sacrifice of water or of fire, and he would soon die also, a
+body defiled, to be cast into outer darkness. For a time the terror and
+the tragedy of that alien brain was mine; I shared its doom and lived
+its death. Later I learnt that a party of men, coming out of the great
+tribulation of the desert, had halted at this station, and a Hindu
+soldier with a broken arm had died on those sacks. I record the incident
+for what it is worth.</p>
+
+<p>Without my friend I should never have achieved this journey. My
+gratitude is a private matter, though I state it here, with some mention
+of my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> dull illness, in order to picture in a small way the
+sufferings of our men from Kut. When some were sick and others hale, the
+death-rate was not so high, but with many parties, such as those whose
+ghosts I believe I saw, there was no possibility of helping each other.
+So starved and so utterly weary were they, that they had no energy
+beyond their own existence. Many men must have died with no faith left
+in man or God.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On arrival at Afion-kara-hissar, we were shown into a bare house. For a
+day I rested blissfully on the floor, asking for nothing better than to
+be allowed to lie still for ever and ever. But this was not to be. On
+the second day of our stay we noticed signs of great excitement among
+our guards. They nailed barbed wire round our windows, and they watched
+us anxiously through skylights, and counted us continually, as if
+uncertain whether two and two made four.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the meaning of their precautions was divulged. Some English
+prisoners had escaped, and our captors were engaged in locking the
+stable door after the steeds had gone. All the prisoners in
+Afion-kara-hissar were marshalled in the street, and marched off to the
+Armenian church, situated at the base of the big rock that dominates the
+town. Hither we also marched, with our new companions, singing the
+prisoners' anthem:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We <i>won't</i> be bothered about</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Wherever we go, we always shout</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;We won't be bothered about. . . .</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;We're bothered if we'll be bothered about!"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>greatly to the astonishment of the townsfolk, who connected the Armenian
+church with massacres rather than melody. The leader of our band was a
+wounded officer, in pyjamas and a bowler hat (this being the sum of his
+possessions) who waved his crutch as a conductor's baton. (Alas! his
+cheery voice is stilled, for he died in hospital a year later. R.I.P.) I
+can still see him hobbling along&mdash;a tall figure in pink pyjamas, with
+one leg swinging (bandaged to the size of a bolster) and his hat askew,
+and his long chin stuck out defiantly&mdash;hymn-writer and hero
+<i>manqu&eacute;</i>&mdash;fit leader of lost causes and of our fantastic pageant to that
+church.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gay and motley crew of prisoners of all nationalities and
+conditions of life who entered its solemn and rather stuffy precincts.
+We were all delighted to be "str&#257;fed" in a worthy cause. Three good men
+had escaped, and more might follow later.</p>
+
+<p>To anyone in decent health the month we spent in the Armenian church
+must have been an interesting experience. Even to me, it was not without
+amusement. Imagine a plain, rather gloomy, church, built of oak and
+sandstone, with a marble chancel in the east. Two rooms opened out on
+either side of the altar, and there was a high gallery in the west. In
+the body<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> of the building the English camped. One of the small rooms was
+taken by the French, the other we reserved for a chapel. The Russians
+chiefly inhabited the space between the chancel and the altar, but the
+overflow of nationalities mingled. Our soldier servants were put in the
+gallery. When everyone was fitted in, there was no space to move, except
+in the centre aisle. There was no place for exercise nor any
+arrangements for washing or cooking. During our stay in the church two
+men died of typhus, and it is extraordinary that the infection did not
+spread, considering the lack of sanitation. During the first night of
+the strafe, the Russians, accustomed to pogroms in their own country,
+thought there was a likelihood of being massacred, and kept watch
+through the small hours of the morning by clumping up and down the aisle
+in their heavy boots. All night long&mdash;for I was sleepless too&mdash;I watched
+these grave, bearded pessimists waiting for a death which did not come,
+while the French and English slept the sleep of optimists. At last dawn
+arrived, and lit the windows over the altar, and a few moments later the
+sunlight crept into the northern transept. Then the Russians gave up
+their vigil, dropped in their tracks, and at once began snoring in the
+aisle, like great watch-dogs.</p>
+
+<p>The noise the two hundred of us made in sleeping was remarkable.
+Probably our nerves were rather queer. The church was never silent
+through the night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> Some cried out continually in their slumbers, others
+went through a pantomime of eating. Some moaned, others chuckled. One
+sleeper gave a hideous laugh at intervals. One could hear it deep down
+in his throat, and mark it gradually bubbling to his lips until he grew
+vocal like some horrible hyena. But it is small wonder that the
+prisoners in the church were restless. The marvel is that they slept at
+all. Nearly all of us had lived through trying moments, and had felt the
+hand of Providence, whose power makes one tremble. We knew the shivers
+of retrospection. One officer, for instance, wounded in an attack on
+Gallipoli, had been dragged as a supposed corpse to the Turkish trenches
+and there built into the parapet. But he was none the worse now for his
+amazing experiences, except that he suffered slightly from deafness, as
+his neck had formed the base of a loophole. Then there was a man, left
+as dead after an attack, who recovered consciousness but not the use of
+his limbs, and lay helpless in the path of the Turkish retreat. For an
+hour the passers-by prodded him with bayonets, so that he now has
+twenty-seven wounds and a large gap in his body where there should be
+solid flesh. From the very brink of the valley of the shadow this boy of
+nineteen had returned to life. Again, there was a young Frenchman, who
+lay four days and nights between the lines, dying of the twin tortures
+of thirst and a stomach wound; but by a miracle he survived, and now at
+night, sometimes, when will lost its grip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> on consciousness, he would
+live those ninety-six hours again. Then there were the submarine crews,
+out of the jaws of the worst death conceivable. One crew had lived for a
+whole day struggling in a net at the bottom of the Dardanelles while the
+air became foul and hope waned, and the submarine "sweated," and depth
+charges exploded so close to them that on one occasion the shock knocked
+a teapot off a table! Hemmed in and helpless, the clammy agony of that
+suspense might well haunt their sleeping hours.</p>
+
+<p>But on the whole our psychology was normal. Only, at nights, if one lay
+awake, did one realise the stress and stark horror through which the
+sleepers had lived. Out of four hundred officers "missing" at the
+Dardanelles, only some forty were surviving at Afion-kara-hissar. This
+fact speaks for itself.</p>
+
+<p>By day we wandered about, so far as the congestion permitted, making
+friends and exchanging experiences. To us, lately from Mesopotamia, the
+then unknown story of Gallipoli stirred our blood as it will stir the
+blood of later men.</p>
+
+<p>I ate and drank the anecdotes of Gallipoli as they were told me. I loved
+the hearing of them, in the various dialects of the protagonists, from a
+lordly lisp to a backwood burr. The brogue, the northern drawl, the
+London twang, the elided g's or the uncertain h's, had each their
+several and distinct fascination. There is joy in hearing one's own
+tongue again after a time of strange speech and foreign faces.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Beyond our reason's sway,</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Clay of the pit whence we were wrought</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Yearns to its fellow-clay."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The many voices of the many British were better than sweet music.</p>
+
+<p>But we had plenty of sweet music as well. The sailors amongst us were
+the cheeriest crew imaginable.</p>
+
+<p>A r&eacute;sum&eacute; of our life at that time would be that we sang often about
+nothing in particular, swore continually at life in general, smoked
+heavily, gambled mildly, and drank <i>'araq</i> when we could get it, and tea
+when we couldn't. Not everyone, I hasten to add, did all these things.
+As in everyday life, there were some who said that the constant
+cigarette was evil, and that cards were a curse, and drink the devil.
+But, again, as in everyday life, their example had no effect on cheerful
+sinners.</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Here's to the bold and gallant three</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Who broke their bonds and sought the sea"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang one of the poets of our captivity, and all of us French, Russians,
+and English, took up the chorus with a roar. The Turkish sentries
+protested vainly, and some, ostentatiously loading their rifles, went up
+to the Western gallery which overlooked the body of the church. As we
+were being treated like Armenians, they could not understand why we did
+not behave like Armenians and herd silently together, as sheep before a
+storm. Instead, two hundred lusty voices<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> proclaimed to anyone who cared
+to listen that we were not downhearted.</p>
+
+<p>See us then at midnight, seated at a table under the high altar. About
+fifty of us are celebrating somebody's birthday, and a demi-john of
+<i>'araq</i> graces the festive board. We have sung every song we know, and
+many we don't.</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Jolly good song and jolly well sung,</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Jolly good fellows every one. . . .</span>
+<span class="i4">Wow! Wow!"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The chorus dies down, and the Master of the Ceremonies, still in pyjamas
+and bowler hat, rises on his sound leg and standing (swaying slightly)
+at the head of the table, raps on it with his crutch for silence.</p>
+
+<p>One officer wears a soup-bowl for a Hun helmet. Others are dressed as
+parodies of Turks, and have been acting in a farce entitled "The
+Escape." Two Irish friends of mine are singing "The Wearing of the
+Green," while others are patriotically drowning their voices. A
+submarine skipper, with a mane of yellow hair over his face, like a lion
+in a picture-book, watches a diplomat dancing a horn-pipe. A little bald
+flying man of gigantic strength and brain, is wrestling with a bearded
+Hercules. Some sailors are singing an old sea-chanty.</p>
+
+<p>The rough deal table, littered with pipes and glasses, the tallow-dips
+lighting the vaulted gloom, the bearded roysterers singing songs older
+than Elizabeth's time, the simple fare of bread and meat, the simpler
+jokes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> and horseplay, took one back through centuries to other men who
+made the best of war. In Falstaff's time such scenes as these must have
+passed in the taverns of Merrie England. Only here, there were no
+wenches to serve us with sack. We had to mix our own <i>'araq</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence, if you please," says he of the long jowl, using his crutch as
+a chairman's hammer. "Silence for the prisoners' band."</p>
+
+<p>The band begins. It consists of penny whistles, banjos, castanets,
+soup-bowls, knives and forks, and anything else within reach. The
+<i>motif</i> of the piece is our release. <i>Andante con coraggio</i> we pass the
+weary months ahead. Then the dawn of our liberation breaks. We smash
+everything we possess, while the train to take us away steams into the
+station.</p>
+
+<p>Sh! Shh! Shhh! Chk! Chk! Chk! Bang! Swish!! We take our seats amid a
+perfect pandemonium. Then the train whistles&mdash;louder and louder&mdash;and we
+move off&mdash;faster and faster and faster and <i>faster</i>, until no one can
+make any more noise, and the dust of our stamping has risen like incense
+to the roof, in a grand finale of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Strange doings in a church, you say? But what would you? We had nowhere
+else to go. There is a time for everything after all, and it is a poor
+heart that never rejoices. I feel sure Solomon himself would have sung
+with us, and proved most excellent company.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday mornings Divine Service was always well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> attended. Perhaps by
+contrast with my usual methods of passing the time, those Sabbath hours
+are set as so many jewels in the tarnished shield of idleness. The
+fadeless beauty of our Common Prayer brought hope and consolation to all
+of us who were gathered together. We repeated the grand old words; we
+sang "Fight the Good Fight" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." We shared
+then, however humbly, in the tears and triumph of our cause. We were not
+of that white company that was to die for England, but we could share
+the sorrow of the women who mourned, and of the old who stood so sadly
+outside the fray.</p>
+
+<p>And as through a magic door, I passed from that barren room to a country
+church where the litany for all prisoners and captives went up to
+Heaven, mingled with the fragrance of English roses.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Afion-kara-hissar means "Black Opium Rock" in Turkish, but it is not as
+interesting a place as it sounds. The only romantic visitors are the
+storks, who use it as an aerodrome on their bi-annual migrations. They
+blacken the sky when they come, in flights a thousand strong, swooping
+and circling over the plain and alighting finally near the black rocks
+that give the town its name. With one leg tucked up, and pensive beak
+back-turned, they form arresting silhouettes against the sunset. And
+curiously enough, the Turkish children know that they bring babies to
+the home.</p>
+
+<p>We lived in four cottages, connected by a common garden. They were quite
+new&mdash;so new that they had no windows or conveniences. We fitted frames
+and panes, we erected bathrooms, installed kitchen ranges, made beds out
+of planks and string, and tables out of packing-cases. We made
+everything, in fact, except the actual houses.</p>
+
+<p>I daresay that at this time we were better treated than the officer
+prisoners in Germany. Not so the men. We officers had plenty to eat,
+though it cost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> a great deal, but the men were always half starved when
+for any reason they could not supplement their ration from Ambassador's
+money, or private remittances from home. Every month the American (and
+later the Dutch) Embassy used to send a sum of money to our prisoners to
+help them buy something more nourishing than the black bread and soup
+provided by the Turks. When this relief did not arrive in time, or the
+Turks delayed in distributing it, our men suffered the greatest
+hardship. Treatment in Turkey was all a question of money. The officers
+could, and did, cash cheques while in captivity, and were able to pay
+for the necessities (and sometimes also the minor luxuries) of
+existence, but the men were entirely dependent on what was given them.
+Although some had bank balances, no one except an officer was allowed to
+write a cheque.</p>
+
+<p>Here it is fitting to say a word in praise of those organisations who
+sent out parcels to our prisoners. No words can express our gratitude to
+them. To us officers, parcels were sometimes in the nature of a luxury,
+though none the less welcome. But to the men, who starved in dungeons of
+the interior, they came as a very present help in time of need. The
+prisoners' parcels saved many lives, and I hope the kind people who
+worked so hard at home against all sorts of difficulties and
+disappointments realise how grateful we are, and what a great work they
+did. Besides the material relief of provisions, the moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> effect of a
+parcel from home on the mind of a sick prisoner cannot be over
+estimated. To open something packed by English hands was like a breath
+of home to him.</p>
+
+<p>We were allowed no communication with the men, so it was very difficult
+to help them. Whether the worst done to our prisoners in Germany equals
+the worst in Turkey I do not know. To compare two horrors is profitless.
+But I do know something of the sufferings of our men, and when I write
+of my own petty amusements and comedies of captivity I do not for a
+moment forget the tragedy of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>Light and shade, however, there must be in every picture, else it is not
+a picture at all. And there must be colour in the canvas, however grim
+the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The poppy fields, which give the town the first part of its name,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> lay
+right underneath our windows, across the station road. In June, when
+they were white with blossom, and the farmers' wives came out to drain
+the precious fluid from the buds, I used to gaze and gaze at the beauty
+of the world, and long for freedom. To be cooped up in a little room
+when the world was green and white, and the sky a flawless blue, and
+summer rode across the open lands, was miserable. It was unbearable to
+be growing old and immobile, like the hills on the horizon, when one
+might be out among the poppy blossoms. Of what use to be alive, if one
+did not share in the youth of the world?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But we were closely guarded in our cottages and rarely allowed out,
+except into the back garden&mdash;a bare space some hundred yards by thirty,
+which was the scene of most of our small activities, from early morning
+skipping to the mid-day display of our washing, and from the occasional
+amateur theatricals of an evening to the rare but tense moments of an
+attempted escape.</p>
+
+<p>A diary of my days might run as follows:</p>
+
+<p><i>Monday.</i> Up at 6 a.m. Skipped 200 times. Two eggs for breakfast, tried
+my new <i>pekmes</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Read <i>Hilal</i>.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Looked out places on my hidden map.
+Long argument about the use of cavalry in modern war. Walk in garden.
+Mutton cutlets for lunch. Completed my new hammock. Argued about Free
+Trade. Played badminton in garden. Read philosophy with &mdash;&mdash; and &mdash;&mdash;.
+<i>Sakuska</i><a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> party with &mdash;&mdash; and &mdash;&mdash; at 7.30. Watched Polly picking
+opium. Dinner at 8. Soup, eggs, suet; very satisfactory. Bridge and bed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tuesday.</i> Up at 6.15. Skipped 250 times, and had a boxing lesson.
+Painful. Two eggs for breakfast, but one bad. <i>Hilal</i> did not arrive.
+Argued about yesterday's cavalry news. Walk in garden. No meat for
+lunch. Bitten by mosquitoes in my hammock. Argued about Protection. Ran
+round the garden ten times. My wind is getting worse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> <i>Sakuska</i> party
+at sevenish with &mdash;&mdash; and &mdash;&mdash; in my room. Polly was seen out walking
+with a <i>posta</i>.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Dinner at 8. Mutton cutlets. Chess and bed.</p>
+
+<p>And so on, <i>ad infinitum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I had at that time come to the conclusion that I could not reach the
+coast from Afion-kara-hissar, so for some time I sought a mental rather
+than a physical escape from my surroundings. Philosophy seemed an ideal
+subject under the circumstances, and in the company of two friends of
+like mind, I made some study of "Creative Evolution." Every afternoon we
+used to forgather for tea, in a little room I had built, where our joint
+contributions provided a well-selected pabulum of cakes and jam and
+Bergson, so that the inner and the outer man were Platonically at one.
+But to plunge from <i>le tremplin de la vie</i> is not easy in captivity.
+Lack of employment cripples imagination. The average mind works best
+when it has practical things to do, and mine, such as it is, boggles at
+abstractions more quickly than it tires of talk.</p>
+
+<p>When this occurred the best thing to do was to laugh. A friend and I
+used to laugh for hours sometimes over weak and washy stories that would
+hardly pass muster, even in the small hours of the morning. But they did
+us good. Generally, however, the time between tea and dinner was spent
+in learned and weighty discussions on appearance, reality, and the
+problems of Being and Not-being.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With my two friends</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">". . . the seed of Wisdom did I sow</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And with my own Hand arboured it to grow,</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;But this was all the Harvest that I reaped&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;I came like Water and like Wind I go."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Only unfortunately I did not go. I remained firmly at Afion-kara-hissar.
+When philosophy failed me, the hours spent in planning escapes and
+concocting cyphers were those which passed most easily. But the craft of
+cyphers, interesting though it be, cannot be discussed in print. Like
+the preparation of poisons, it must remain part of the unpublished
+knowledge of the world, until the millennium. As regards escapes, some
+of us thought a great deal, and did very little. There were, however,
+some ingenious attempts made to get to Constantinople. One officer
+conceived the idea of going there to be treated for hydrophobia, and,
+after inflicting suitable wounds in the calf of his leg with a pair of
+nail scissors, he asserted that a certain dog, well known in the camp,
+had exhibited strange symptoms of insanity, amongst others, that of
+suddenly biting him in the leg. This ruse would have succeeded but for
+the fact that the Turks did not treat hydrophobia with any seriousness.
+Kismet takes no account of the Pasteur system. Short of actually
+snapping at someone, the officer could not have established a belief in
+his infection. He found it simpler to feign another ailment. Two other
+officers, however, of a still more picturesque turn of mind,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> declared
+that they themselves were mad, and actually hung themselves as a proof
+of insanity. They were found one morning by their astonished sentries
+suspended from a rafter, and apparently in the last stages of
+strangulation. Convinced that they were "afflicted of God," the Turks
+sent them to hospital, and carefully watched for any symptoms of
+suicidal mania. After various astonishing experiences, in their r&ocirc;le of
+madmen, amongst real madmen in a Turkish lunatic ward, they were
+eventually exchanged.</p>
+
+<p>In sheer manual dexterity, our prisoners also showed great resource. The
+soldiers who were employed on making a tunnel through the Taurus, to
+take one example, succeeded in purloining various odds and ends from the
+workshops where they laboured under German supervision, until they
+eventually were able to build for themselves a complete collapsible
+boat. This boat they actually tested at dead of night on a river near
+their camp, before setting out to reach the coast. That success did not
+crown their efforts was sheer bad luck. Luck, also, was against most of
+the forty officers who concerted a simultaneous escape from Yuzgad, and
+prepared for it in absolute secrecy, down to the smallest detail, for
+months beforehand. Some of them even made their own boots. Only eight
+out of the original party actually got out of the country, however.
+Their story, surely one of the most remarkable ever written, has
+recently been published.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two great difficulties in any attempt to escape were: firstly, that
+the Turks, by spies or otherwise, studied the psychology of every
+individual prisoner, setting special guards on the more enterprising
+among them, and, secondly, that the distance of the camp from the coast,
+and the number of brigands infesting every mile of that distance, was
+such that it was extremely difficult to gain the sea, let alone embark
+upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The spies made some very bad guesses about the intentions of the
+prisoners. One harmless and elderly officer was seen greasing a pair of
+marching boots, and this gave rise to the most sinister suspicions.
+Where could the officer want to march to, except the coast? He was
+immediately asked for his parole, and gave it.</p>
+
+<p>Exercise in any form was a sign of incipient madness in the eyes of the
+Turks. Why, they argued, should anyone in his right mind skip five
+hundred times, and then splash himself with ice-cold water? If he did
+such things, he ought certainly to be placed under restraint. Boxing,
+again, was a suspect symptom. A man who bled at the nose for pleasure
+might commit any enormity. In order to circumvent suspicion it was
+necessary to adopt the utmost caution. The method I myself employed is
+described in a later chapter. One friend of mine, while training for a
+trip to Blighty, habitually carried heavy lead plates hung round his
+waist, to accustom himself to the weight of his pack. Such were the
+internal difficulties. But outside the camp the problems were even more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+puzzling. How to avoid the brigands&mdash;how to carry food enough for the
+journey&mdash;how to elude our guards and get a few hours' start&mdash;what
+clothes to wear and what pack to carry&mdash;how to find one's way&mdash;how to
+get a boat once the coast was reached&mdash;here were well-nigh insoluble
+questions, which provided, however, excellent topics for talk.</p>
+
+<p>I talked about these things for eighteen months. But I will ask the
+reader to skip that dismal procession of moons, and come directly to the
+day when I was asked by the Commandant to sign a paper stating that I
+would not attempt to escape. I naturally refused, as also did another
+officer to whom the same request was made.</p>
+
+<p>Our negotiations in this matter, while interesting to us at the time,
+and involving the composition of several noble documents in French, led
+to the sad result that we were both transferred, at an hour's notice, to
+a little box of a house in the Armenian quarter. Once inside the house,
+with the various belongings we had collected during a twelve-month of
+captivity in Afion-kara-hissar, we two completely filled the only
+habitable room. And although habitable in a sense, this room was already
+occupied by undesirable tenants.</p>
+
+<p>I must here, rather diffidently, introduce the subject of vermin. But,
+saving the public's presence, bugs are the very devil. Other insects are
+nothing to them. Lice the gallant reader may have met at the front.
+Fleas are a common experience. Centipedes and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> scorpions are well known
+in India. But bugs are Beelzebub's especial pets, and Beelzebub is a
+ruler in Turkey. It is quite impossible to write of my captivity there
+without mentioning these small, flat creatures who live in beds. I
+cannot disregard them: they have bitten into my very being.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine lying down, after a sordid day of dust and disagreeableness. One
+thinks of home, or the sea. One tries to slide out to the gulfs of
+sleep, where healing is. But rest does not come: there is a sense of
+malaise. One's skin feels irritable and unclean. Presently there is an
+itching at one's wrists, and at the back of one's neck. One squashes
+something, and there is a smear of blood (one's own good blood) and one
+realises that one's skin (one's own good skin) is being punctured by
+these evil beasts. Almost instantly one squashes another. A horrible
+odour arises. One lights the candle, and there, scuttling under the
+pillow, are five or six more of these loathsome vermin. They not only
+suck one's blood. They sap one's faith in life.</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"If one could dream that such a world began</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;In some slow devil's heart that hated man,"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>indeed one would not be mistaken. In them the powers of Satan seem
+incarnate.</p>
+
+<p>Having killed every bug in sight, one lies back and gasps. And then, out
+of the corner of one's eye, creeping up the pillow, and hugely magnified
+by proximity, another monstrous brute appears. It runs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> forward,
+horribly avid, and eager, and brisk. All the cruelty of nature is in its
+hideous head, all the activity of evil in its darting body. Presently
+another and another appear. There is no end to them. You kill them on
+the bed, and they appear on the walls. You search out and slaughter
+every form of life within reach, but the bugs still drop on you from the
+ceiling. No killing can assuage their appetite for a healthy body.
+Reckless of danger, they batten on the young. Regardless of death, they
+swarm to silky skin. Of two victims, they will always choose the one in
+best condition.</p>
+
+<p>After being eaten by bugs for some time, one feels infected with their
+contamination. It is almost impossible to rise superior to them. In one
+night a man can live through the miseries of Job.</p>
+
+<p>It may be imagined therefore that our confinement in that little house
+was not amusing. My companion in misfortune and myself lived in that box
+for a week with the bugs, without once going out of the door. Now, to
+stay in a room for a week may not seem a very trying punishment (I was
+later to spend a month in solitary confinement); but when the punishment
+is wholly undeserved, and when, moreover, one is wrongly suspected of
+something one would like to do but has not done, and when one is bitten
+all night, and when from confinement one sees other officers walking
+about in comparative freedom, one naturally begins to fret.</p>
+
+<p>There were compensations, however. Firstly, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> friendship grew between
+my companion and myself which I hope will endure through life. Secondly,
+as a prisoner, any sort of change is welcome. And, thirdly, we felt we
+were doing something useful. The Commandant did not dare to force us to
+sign parole. Neither could he keep us permanently in special restraint.
+It is rarely that one gets the chance, as a prisoner, of putting the
+enemy on the horns of such a dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>This Commandant, an ugly, drunken beast, who is now, I hope, expiating
+the innumerable crimes he committed against our men, caused a search to
+be made one day amongst the effects of all the prisoners at
+Afion-kara-hissar. One of the most interesting things he found was a
+diary kept by a senior British officer, with the following entry:</p>
+
+<p>"New Commandant arrived. His face looks as if it was meant to strike
+matches on."</p>
+
+<p>No better description could possibly have been written. He was a vain
+man, and it must have cut him to the quick to see himself as others saw
+him.</p>
+
+<p>After a month of "special treatment" the Commandant learnt that Turkish
+Army Headquarters, fearing reprisals, no doubt, would not support his
+bluff in punishing us if we did not give parole. He had to climb down
+completely.</p>
+
+<p>We were transferred to another house, in the Armenian quarter, already
+occupied by some R.N.A.S. officers, who were all determined to escape
+if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> opportunity arose. A very cheery house-party we made.</p>
+
+<p>The time was now the year of grace 1917, and our life was organised to
+some extent. Once or twice a week we were allowed to play football, or
+go for a walk. On Thursdays we used to troop down in a body to visit the
+officers in the other houses, and on Monday mornings we were sometimes
+able, with special permission, to attend the weekly fair of coke and
+firewood held in the market-place. All this gave an interest to our
+lives, and money, so long as one was prepared to write cheques, was not
+a source of difficulty. The Turks, in fact, encouraged us to write
+cheques, exchanging them for Turkish notes at nearly double their face
+value (190 piastres for a pound was the best I myself received), because
+they rightly thought that our signature was worth more than the
+guarantees of the Turkish Government. I heard afterwards that our
+cheques had a brisk circulation on the Constantinople Bourse. But one
+was loth to write many. Five pounds is five pounds&mdash;and in Turkey it
+represented only a packet of tea or a kilogram of sugar. . . . I saved
+as much as I could for bribes when escaping.</p>
+
+<p>A microscopic, but not unamusing, social life was in full swing. There
+were parties and politics, clubs and cliques. Each prisoner, according
+to his temperament, took his choice between grave pursuits and gay.</p>
+
+<p>There were lecturers (really good ones) who discoursed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> on a wide range
+of topics, from Mendelism to Mesopotamia. There were professors of
+French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hindustani, and I
+daresay all the languages of Babel, ready to teach in return for
+reciprocal instruction in English. Our library contained many luminous
+volumes, kindly sent out by the Board of Trade. Law and Seamanship,
+Semaphoring and Theology, Carpentry and the Integral Calculus, Gardening
+and Genetics&mdash;such is a random selection of the subjects on which there
+were experts available and eager to impart information.</p>
+
+<p>But, personally, my mind resisted the seductions of learning. I learned
+only how to waste time. And sometimes, perhaps, I touched the hem of
+Philosophy's garment, and stammered a few words to her. Otherwise I did
+nothing except try to forget things . . . things seen.</p>
+
+<p>Yet one enjoyed oneself, occasionally. The football was great fun. So
+also were some of the lighter sides of our indoor life. Poker used to
+pass the time. So also, though more rarely, did reading. The plays which
+a dramatist&mdash;soon to be eminent, I expect&mdash;presented to enthusiastic
+audiences are delightful memories. His revues and topical verses were
+worthy of a wider audience, and I am sure his work&mdash;unlike the most of
+our labours&mdash;will not be wasted.</p>
+
+<p>But best of all, I think, was to sit in a circle on the floor round a
+brazier on a winter's evening, and sip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> hot lemon <i>'araq</i>, and listen to
+songs and stories. It was a relief to laugh, and forget the fate of
+those we could not help.</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sweet life, if love were stronger,</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Earth clear of years that wrong her . . ."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang a soft Irish voice, whose melody seemed to melt into the cold of
+one's captivity. . . . Then there were the fancy dress balls held on New
+Year's Eve in 1917 and 1918. So good were they that for the night one
+completely forgot one's surroundings. A very attractive barmaid
+dispensed refreshments behind a table. There were several debutantes,
+and at least one chaperone. Pierrot was there, and Pierrette, and
+Mephistopheles, and Bacchus, and a very realistic Pirate. If some
+reveller in London had looked in on us at midnight he might easily have
+fancied himself at an Albert Hall dance. He would certainly not have
+guessed that all the clothes and furniture and food were home-made, and
+that everyone in the room was a British officer. The self-confident
+flapper, for instance, who could only have given him "the next missing
+three" was a Major in the Flying Corps. And the girl at the bar, with
+big brown eyes, who would have offered him <i>'araq</i> so charmingly was
+really a submarine officer of the Navy, and a well-known figure at "The
+Goat."</p>
+
+<p>After functions such as these, the morning after the night before found
+me wondering where it would all end. If the war lasted another ten
+years, would I ever be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> fit to take a place in normal life? How long
+could I keep sane in this topsy-turvy world? . . .</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The weather in the winter of 1918 was absolutely arctic. For a month
+there was a very hard frost, and during all this time, had it not been
+for festivities such as the foregoing I should have stayed stupidly in
+bed and hibernated until the spring. Intenser cold I have never felt. In
+the room in which we dined the water froze in our glasses on several
+occasions while we were eating our evening meal. Icy winds howled
+through the house, and the paper windows we had improvised (to replace
+unobtainable glass) had burst, through weight of snow. Also, the plaster
+of the outer walls of our mansion had peeled off, so that cold blasts
+penetrated through the walls. With few clothes and only one pair of
+leaky boots it was impossible to keep warm and dry-shod. Fuel, of
+course, was very scarce. In my bedroom some precious quarts of beer,
+which I was preserving for Christmas, froze and cracked their bottles. I
+invited a party to taste my blocks of amber ice, but they were better to
+look at than to swallow.</p>
+
+<p>Under these climatic conditions washing was a labour that took one the
+best part of the morning, and until I caught a chill I used to economize
+time and fuel by rolling in the snow on the flat roof of my house. This
+amused me, and surprised the neighbourhood, but it was a poor substitute
+for a bath. That winter was a black, bleak time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During the hard frost it was impossible to escape, but we used
+occasionally to reconnoitre the sentries outside our house after
+lock-up. I have spent some amusing moments in this way, especially in
+watching one sentry (generally on duty at midnight) who used to warm
+himself by playing with a cat. With pussy on one arm and his rifle on
+the other, he formed a delightfully casual figure. It would have been
+quite easy to pass him, but the difficulties lay beyond. . . .</p>
+
+<p>I then thought, wrongly I dare say, that the only reasonable hope of
+success lay in starting from Constantinople, and it was to this end that
+my real schemes were shaping. But I thought it well to have two strings
+to my bow, and besides, I considered no day well spent which did not
+include some practical effort towards escape.</p>
+
+<p>A complex of causes contributed to this idea, which became almost an
+obsession. First, I dare say, was boredom. Second, the feeling that one
+was not earning one's pay or doing one's duty by remaining idly a
+prisoner. And thirdly&mdash;or was it firstly?&mdash;the condition under which our
+men were living and the crimes which had been committed against them
+made it imperative that someone should get to England with our news. It
+was high time, and past high time, that the civilised world should know
+how our prisoners fared.</p>
+
+<p>I have already written the savage story of our life at Mosul, where the
+men died from calculated cruelty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> The history of the Kut prisoners is
+even worse, for the crime was on a greater scale.</p>
+
+<p>That garrison, debilitated from the long siege and the climatic
+conditions of Mesopotamia, were marched right across Asia Minor with
+hardly any clothes, no money, and insufficient food. Their nameless
+sufferings will never be known in full, for many died in the desert,
+clubbed to death by their guards, stripped naked, and left by the
+roadside. Others were abandoned in Arab villages, when in the last
+stages of fever or dysentery. Others, more fortunate, were found dead by
+their companions after the night's halt, when the huddled sleepers
+turned out to face another day of misery. Hopeless indeed the outlook
+must have seemed to some lad fresh from the fields of home. The brutal
+sentries, the arid desert, the daily deaths, the daily quarrels, the
+bitterness of the future, as bleak as the acres of sand that stretched
+to their unknown destination, the dwindling company of friends, the grip
+of thirst, the pangs of hunger, and the pains of death&mdash;such was the
+outlook for many a lad who died between Baghdad and Aleppo. Ghosts of
+such memories must not be lightly evoked amongst those alive to-day,
+friends of the fallen, but always they will haunt the trails of the
+northern Arabian desert.</p>
+
+<p>Through it all our men were heroes. To the last they showed their
+captors of what stuff the Anglo-Saxon is made. The cowardly Kurds, who
+were the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> worst of the various escorts provided between Baghdad and
+Aleppo, never dared to insult our men unless they outnumbered them four
+to one. Even then they generally waited until some sick man fell down
+from exhaustion before clubbing him to death with their rifle-butts.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the desert, between Mosul and Aleppo, a friend of mine
+found six half-demented British soldiers who had been propped up against
+the wall of a mud hut and left there to die. There was no transport, no
+medicines. Nothing could be done for them. They died long before the
+relief parties organised at Aleppo could come to their rescue.</p>
+
+<p>At Aleppo the hospital treatment was extremely bad.</p>
+
+<p>All men who were fit to move (and many who were not) were sent on in
+cattle trucks to various camps in the centre of Anatolia, and when at
+length they reached these camps after vicissitudes which were only a
+dreary repetition of earlier experiences, they came upon the plague of
+typhus at its height, and naturally, in this weakened state, succumbed
+by scores and hundreds.</p>
+
+<p>To see a body of our soldiers arriving at Afion-kara-hissar, pushed and
+kicked and beaten by their escort, was terrible.</p>
+
+<p>Our men were literally skeletons alive, skeletons with skin stretched
+across their bones, and a few rags on their backs. This is an exact
+statement of things seen. They struggled up the road, hardly able to
+carry the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> pitiful little bundles containing scraps of bread, a bit of
+soap, a mug, all, in short, that they had been able to save from
+systematic looting on the way.</p>
+
+<p>In silence, and unswerving, they passed up that road to the hospital,
+and all who saw those companies of Englishmen so grim and gallant in
+adversity must have felt proud their veins carried the same blood.</p>
+
+<p>Once in hospital our prisoners fared no better. There were no beds for
+them, and hardly any blankets or medicines. They died in groups, lying
+outside the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>It was a common sight to see sad parties of our men passing down this
+same road, away from the hospital this time, and towards the cemetery.
+Those weary processions, consisting of four or five emaciated men, with
+a stretcher and a couple of shovels, used to pass underneath our windows
+going to bury their comrade. They were a party of skeletons alive,
+carrying a skeleton dead.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Afion = opium.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Pekmes</i>: a substitute for jam and sugar, made from
+raisins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The <i>Hilal</i>: a Moslem morning paper, published in French.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Sakuska</i>: Russian for hors d'oeuvres&mdash;such as sardines,
+frogs' legs, onions, bits of cheese, or indeed anything edible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Posta</i>: a Turkish sentry.</p></div>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON</h3>
+
+
+<p>The contrast of tragedy and farce and the incidents, and the lack of
+incident, which I have attempted to sketch in the foregoing chapter, had
+a marked mental effect on all of us. But each felt the effects of
+confinement differently. With me, I came to look on my life in Turkey as
+something outside the actuality of existence. I did not feel "myself" at
+all. I was disembodied, left with no link with the outer world, except
+memory and anticipation. I was in a dark forest far from all avenues of
+activity such as the sanity of society and the companionship of women.
+My world seemed make-believe, and my interests counterfeit.</p>
+
+<p>I worked at a novel with a friend of mine, and for a time that seemed
+something practical to do. But there was always the fear that it would
+be taken from us by the Turks, and the possibility that we would never
+publish it.</p>
+
+<p>Doubt and indecision lay heavy on me. I did not know how long captivity
+would last. A criminal's sentence is fixed: not so a prisoner of war's.
+He is dependent on matters beyond his control, and a will beyond his
+narrow ambit. To reach that outside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> will, and to form a part of it
+again, was my dominating wish. Through the glasses of captivity the
+world was colourless and distorted. Only freedom could make me see it
+again aright. And when freedom seemed remote, the world was very
+colourless.</p>
+
+<p>The novel amused me by snatches. Learning languages amused me at times.
+But these things were really the diversions of a child, who dreams
+through all its lesson-time of another and a fairer world.</p>
+
+<p>But, unlike a child, I became absorbed in self. I analysed my moods, and
+thought gloomily about my health. I mourned my youth, as my hair turned
+grey. The sorrows of the spinster were mine and the griefs of the
+middle-aged. The value of material things was magnified. The pleasures
+of the palate, I confess, assumed an exaggerated importance. I found a
+new joy in food, and sometimes I dreamed that I was eating. Also I
+contracted the habit of smoking cigarettes in the middle of the night.
+And I learnt that the effect of alcohol, when one is very depressed, is
+like putting in the top clutch of the car of consciousness, so that one
+runs forward smoothly on the road of life. In short, I enjoyed eating
+and drinking and smoking in a way that I had never done before, and
+never will again, I hope. But I know now why public-houses flourish.
+After my own experience of deathly dullness, I heartily sympathise with
+those who seek relief in alcohol and nicotine. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> may be poison, but
+in this imperfect world the deadliest poison of all is boredom.
+Prohibition, as I saw it in Turkey, when tobacco was short, or food was
+scarce, or alcohol was forbidden, did not impress me as being
+beneficial. The fact is, we all need stimulant of one sort or another.
+Normally our work, our home, or our hopes supply this need. Almost
+everyone in the world is struggling (however carefully they may disguise
+the fact) to be other than they are, and better (or worse) than they
+are. We strive after superlatives and are rarely satisfied by them. But
+in captivity, as in other circumstances of distress, this stay in life,
+this hope of something different and wish for something <i>more</i>, is
+suddenly removed. We are left without <i>stimuli</i>. Nothing seems to
+matter. One's mental and material habits inevitably relax. A muddy idea
+seems as good as a clear one&mdash;a sloppy suit of clothes serves as well as
+a tidy one. Energy wanes.</p>
+
+<p>But why? The reason is that the average mind cannot live on
+abstractions. It must grapple with something practical. One must sharpen
+one's wits on the world, and it is just this that as a prisoner one
+cannot do. One cannot "lay hold on life," because there is no life to
+lay hold of, except an unnatural and artificial existence, where the
+sympathy of women and the dignity of work are absent. That was the crux
+of the matter. Sympathy and dignity were lacking in our life. We heard
+of advances and retreats as from another sphere. We read of great
+heroisms and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> great sorrows without being close to them. We had no part
+in the quarrel. We were in a squalid by-way, living out a mean tragedy,
+while the fate of all we loved was in the balance. Never again would we
+go fighting.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment of our capture we had passed into a strange narrow life,
+where the spirit of man, while retaining all its old memories and hopes,
+could not express them in action.</p>
+
+<p>Captivity is a minor form of death, and I was dead, to all intents and
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Often, lying a-bed in the early morning, I used to feel that my body was
+completely gone, and that only a fanciful and feverish intelligence
+remained. I remember especially one dawn in the spring of 1917, when I
+watched two figures passing down the station road. Slouching towards the
+station, and all unconscious of the beauty of the waking world, came a
+soldier with his pack and rifle. He wore the grey Turkish uniform, his
+beard was grey, his cheeks were also grey and sunken. Slowly, slowly he
+dragged his heavy feet towards the train that would take him away to the
+war. The train had been already signalled, I knew (for I kept notes of
+the traffic in those days), and I found myself hoping anxiously that he
+would not be late. The sooner he was killed the better. He was old and
+ugly and ill. If only such as he could perish. . . . Then my thought
+took wings of the morning. From the soldier, plodding onwards devotedly,
+as so many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> men have gone to their deaths, my eye ranged across the
+plains, lying dim and dark to eastward, to the horizon mountains of the
+Suleiman Dagh, whose snow had already seen the messengers of morning
+hasting from the lands below our world. And man seemed mean and minute
+in the purposes of Nature. So ugly was he, such a blot on the landscape
+with his trains and soldiers, that I wondered he continued to exist.
+There was a life above our life in the dawn. The powers of the world
+knew nothing of this soldier's hopes and fears. To them his endeavours
+were a comedy. A huge mountain-back, with the gesture of some giant in
+the playtime of long ago, seemed shrugging its shoulders at this
+ridiculous straying atom of a moment's space. The train came in, and I
+saw its smoke above the tree-tops of the station. It whistled shrilly,
+and the soldier quickened his pace. No doubt he was late. Perhaps he
+still survives, and is toiling even now towards some trench. Anyway he
+passed from my ken, but I still stood at the window, looking towards the
+mountains and the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Then there passed an archaic ox-cart, creaking down the road slowly, as
+it has creaked down the ages, from the night of Time. It was drawn by a
+white heifer, whose shoulders strained against the yoke, for it was a
+heavy cart. But she went forward willingly, resignedly. Work was her
+portion. She would live and die under the yoke. She licked her cool
+muzzle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> dusted flies with her neat tail, and looked forward with
+wistful eyes that seemed to see beyond her working world, to some
+ultimate haven for the quiet workers. Somewhere she would find rest at
+last. To my feverish imagination that white heifer symbolised the pathos
+of all the driven souls who go forward unquestioning to destiny.</p>
+
+<p>And the soldier with his pack was a type also of voiceless millions who
+carry the burden of our civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>We stagger on, under the bludgeonings of chance, and but rarely lift our
+eyes to the dawn, although a daily miracle is there. Someone conducts
+the orient-rite, regardless of the lives of men, which come sweeping on,
+on the tide of war, to end in foam and froth. Yet from this stir of hate
+and heroism some purpose must surely rise. From the travail of the
+trenches some meaning will be born.</p>
+
+<p>I saw things thus, through images and symbols. Across the vast inanity
+of that waiting time, streaks of vision used to flash, like distant
+summer lightning. Impermanent, but beautiful to me, they lit a fair
+horizon. Else, all was dark.</p>
+
+<p>To call this time a death in life seems an overstatement, but if my
+experiences in Turkey had any mental value at all, it was just this: to
+teach me how to die. A curtain had come down on consciousness when I was
+captured. Since then I only lived in the Before and After of captivity.
+My old self was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> finished. I saw it in clear but disjunct pictures of
+recollection: pig-sticking, sailing, dining, dancing, or on the road to
+Messines one hard November night when feet froze in stirrups and horses
+slipped and struck blue lights from the cobbles. And my new self awaited
+the moment of freedom. It still stirred in the womb of war.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, in my belief, do the souls of our comrades lost consider their
+lives on earth and look back on their time of trial with interest and
+regret. Discarnate, they cannot achieve their desires, yet they long to
+manifest again in the world of men. With level and unclouded eyes they
+consider the incidents of mortality, and find in them a Purpose to
+continue. There is work for them in the world through many lives, and
+love, which will meet and re-meet its love. And so at last, drawn by
+duty and affection, those who have woven their lives in the tapestry of
+our time will one day take up the threads again.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMIC HOSPITAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The one bulwark against morbidity was hope of an escape. Only by getting
+away, or at any rate making an attempt, could I justify my continued
+existence, when so many good men were dying in the world outside&mdash;and at
+our own doors.</p>
+
+<p>Now certain spies, as I have told, were constantly on the look-out for
+officers likely to give trouble to our custodians. The Commandant, I
+knew, suspected me of wanting to escape, owing to my general eagerness
+for exercise. I thought, therefore, that if I could induce him to
+believe that I was ready to dream away my days at Afion-kara-hissar, I
+should have established that confidence in my character which is the
+basis of all success. I consequently purchased some two pounds of a
+certain dark and viscous drug, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. With a sort of
+theatrical secrecy (for even in Turkey Mrs. Grundy has her say), I
+proceeded to prepare the stuff by boiling it for two hours in a copper
+saucepan. I did this on a day when one of the Turkish staff came to the
+house to distribute letters. Naturally the smell attracted notice. I
+made flimsy excuses to account for it.</p>
+
+<p>After distilling the decoction, filtering, and then boiling it down to
+the consistency of treacle, the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> phase of my little plan was
+ended. One of the Turkish staff, a certain Cypriote youth, had become
+thoroughly interested in my proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>I showed him, under vows of secrecy which I knew he would not keep, the
+stage property I had bought, consisting of two bamboo pipes, a lamp, a
+terra-cotta bowl, some darning needles, and the "treacle" in a jampot.
+Fortunately the most of these implements I had obtained second-hand from
+a real opium-smoker, so that they did not look too new. Also I had read
+de Quincey and Claude Farr&egrave;re. After discussing the subject at length,
+the Cypriote suggested that we might smoke together one evening. I
+agreed with alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>One night after lock-up, therefore, I slipped out of my house, with my
+paraphernalia hidden under my overcoat. A specially bribed Turkish
+sentry brought me to a silent, shuttered house in a side street. Here
+the door was opened by an evil-looking harridan, who showed me upstairs
+to a thickly carpeted room, strewn with cushions, on which my host was
+lying. The blinds were drawn and only the glimmer of a little green lamp
+lit the wreaths of whitish smoke which curled down from the low ceiling.
+The fumes stang my palate and thrilled me with expectancy. I could
+taste, rather than smell, that strange savour of opium which fascinates
+its devotees.</p>
+
+<p>I lay down, in the semi-darkness, on a sofa beside my host. After some
+general conversation, I showed him my pipes and needles, but he said
+that for that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> evening I should only smoke the opium of his brewing.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a joy to have found a fellow-spirit," I sighed. "When one has
+opium one wants nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"How many pipes do you smoke a day?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty," I said boldly, adding, "when I am in practice."</p>
+
+<p>"That is nothing," said the Cypriote. "I smoke a hundred. Come, let us
+begin. Time is empty, except for opium."</p>
+
+<p>"But who will prepare our pipes?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We will do that ourselves," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't," I had to admit. "I&mdash;I am used to an attendant, who hands me
+my pipes already cooked."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one here," he said, "except an ugly old woman. But I will
+show you myself. Half the pleasure is lost if another hand prepares the
+precious fluid. See, you take a drop of opium&mdash;so&mdash;on the point of the
+needle, and holding it over the flame of the lamp, you turn and turn it
+gently until it swells and expands and glows with its hidden life. From
+a black drop it changes to a glowing bubble of crimson. Then you cool it
+again, moulding and pressing it back to a little pellet upon the glass
+of the lampshade. Then again you cook it, and again you cool it. Only
+experience can tell when it is ready to smoke. It is an art, like other
+arts. I would rather cook opium than write a poem. It is even better
+than money. Now you take your pipe and, heating the little hole through
+which the opium is smoked, so that it will stick, you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> thrust your
+needle&mdash;so&mdash;into the hole, and then withdraw it again, leaving the
+pellet of perfect peace behind. And now, lying on your left side, with
+your head well back amongst the cushions, you hold your pipe over the
+flame and draw in a long and grateful breath. In and in you
+breathe. . . ."</p>
+
+<p>I watched him take a deep draught of the drug, and then lie back among
+the cushions with heavy-lidded eyes. For a full half-minute he remained
+silent and dreaming, then expelled the thick white smoke with a sigh of
+bliss.</p>
+
+<p>It was my turn now, and not without some dismay (although curiosity was
+probably a stronger emotion) I accepted a pipe of his preparing. I
+inhaled in and in&mdash;I choked a little&mdash;and then lay back with a
+dreaminess that was not simulated, for it had made me feel giddy.</p>
+
+<p>"You prepare a most perfect pipe," I coughed through the acrid fumes.</p>
+
+<p>But I had realised immediately that I had not an opium temperament. In
+all I smoked ten small pipes that first evening, without feeling any ill
+effects beyond a heavy lassitude, which lasted all through the following
+day. I was disappointed and disgusted by the experience. The beautiful
+dreams are a myth. So also is the deadly fascination of the drug. I
+loathed it more each time I tasted it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet those nights I lay on a sofa, <i>couch&eacute; &agrave; gauche</i> as opium-smokers
+say, weaving a tissue of deceit into the grey-white clouds encircling
+us, will always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> remain one of the most curious memories of my life. The
+couches, the needles and the pipes, the pin-point pupils and wicked
+profile of my host, as he leaned over the green glimmer of the lamp
+which burnt to the god to whom his heart was given, and the growth of
+that god in him, as pipe followed pipe to stir his consciousness, and
+the beatitude that lit his features, as he looked up from amidst the
+cushions to that dream-world of subtle smoke, to be seen only with
+narrowed eyes, where princes of the poppies reign: this had a glamour
+against the drab setting of captivity which I will neither deny nor
+excuse. I was doing something practical once more. Instead of reading
+philosophy or playing chess, I was engaged in a human game, whose stake
+was freedom.</p>
+
+<p>A measure of success attended my efforts, for I learnt from the
+Cypriote, in the course of subsequent visits to his house, that if I
+wished for a holiday to Constantinople it would not be difficult to
+arrange.</p>
+
+<p>I think we were both playing a double game.</p>
+
+<p>We both tried to make the other talk, he with the idea of getting
+information about the camp and I in the hope of picking up some hint as
+to where to hide in Constantinople. But card-sharpers might as well have
+tried to fleece each other by the three card trick. His knowledge of
+Constantinople seemed to be <i>nil</i>, while the information he got out of
+me would not have filled his opium pipe. After these excursions I used
+sometimes to wonder whether I was not wasting my time and health. But
+time is cheap in captivity, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> as to health, I used to counteract the
+opium by counter-orgies of exercises. In the early mornings I skipped
+and bathed in secret, but in the daytime I tottered wanly about the
+streets, and whenever I saw the Cypriote I told him that I craved for
+<i>confiture</i>: this being our name for opium.</p>
+
+<p>In my condition it was an easy matter to be sent to the doctor. I told
+him various astonishing stories about my health, chiefly culled from a
+French medical work which I found in the waiting-room of his house.
+Within a month I was transferred to Haidar Pasha Hospital, near
+Constantinople. Had I been in brutal health, the operation to my nose
+which was the ostensible reason of my departure would not have been
+considered necessary. But I had been removed from the category of
+suspects, and was now considered an amiable invalid.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The guard on my northward journey was more like a sick attendant than a
+sentry. I showed him some opium pills, which I declared were delicious
+to take. He evinced the greatest interest, and I was able to prevail on
+him to swallow two or three as an experiment. Unfortunately, after he
+had taken them, I discovered they contained nothing more exciting than
+cascara. They did not send him to sleep at all.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at Haidar Pasha without incident. Before being admitted, my
+effects were searched, and stored away, but being by that time
+accustomed to searches, I was able to hide, upon my person, a variety<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+of things that would be useful in an escape, notably a compass, and a
+complete set of maps of Constantinople and its surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sir Robert Paul, with whom I had discussed plans at
+Afion-kara-hissar, was already installed in hospital, where he was being
+treated for an aural complaint. His friendship was an inestimable
+stand-by through the months that followed. Through scenes of farce and
+tragedy he was always the same feckless and fearless spirit. In success,
+as in adversity, he kept an equal mien. Without him, the most amusing
+chapters in my life would not have happened, and if I write "<i>I</i>" in the
+pages which follow, it is only because Robin, as I shall hereafter call
+him, has not been consulted about this record of our days together.
+Owing to circumstances beyond our control, the full responsibility for
+this story must be mine. The seas divide us. I cannot ask his help, or
+solicit his approval.</p>
+
+<p>The hospital at Haidar Pasha was the most delightfully casual place
+imaginable. One wandered into one's ward in a Turkish nightshirt, and
+wandered out again at will, the only limits to peregrination being the
+boundaries of the hospital and one's own rather fantastic dress. Unless
+one asked loudly and insistently for medicines or attendance, no one
+dreamed of doing anything at all in the way of treatment. The only
+attention the patients received was to be turned out of the hospital
+when they were either dead or restored to health. Under the latter
+category a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> crowd of invalids came every day, who were generally ejected
+just before noon, clamouring loudly for their mid-day meal, and the
+unexpended portion of their day's ration. Of deaths in hospital I
+witnessed only one, although scores occurred during my stay. One evening
+an Armenian officer was brought into my ward with severe wounds in the
+head, due to a prematurely exploded bomb. He was laid flat on a bed, and
+instantly proceeded to choke. No one came near him. It seemed obvious to
+me that if he was propped up by pillows he would be able to breathe. But
+no one propped him up. I suggested to the hospital orderly that this
+should be done, and he said, "Yarin." And "yarin" the poor officer died
+of lack of breath. How sick men survived is a mystery to me, because
+they were never attended to, unless strong enough to scream. Screaming,
+however, is a habit to which the Turkish patient is not averse. He does
+not believe in the stoical repression of feeling. Strong and brave men
+will bellow like bulls while their wounds are being dressed. Unless,
+indeed, one makes a fuss, no one will believe one is being hurt. I have
+seen mutton-fisted dressers tearing off bandages by main force, while
+some unfortunate patient with a stoical tradition sweats with agony and
+bites his lips in silence.</p>
+
+<p>But although the Turk cries out, he is by no means a coward under the
+knife. His stern and simple faith seems to help him here. There is
+something very fine about a good Moslem's readiness for death. No man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+who knows the religion, or has lived intimately among its adherents, can
+fail to give it reverence. Before God all men are equal, and when one
+walks about in a nightshirt, one begins to realise this fundamental
+truth. There was a great friendliness in that hospital, and a cordiality
+that coloured the otherwise sordid surroundings. Poor jettison of the
+war, broken with fighting, or rotten with disease, or shamming sick, we
+forgathered in the corridors, or in the garden, with no thought for the
+external advantages of rank and fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Matches at that time had practically disappeared from Turkey, and
+whenever one issued from the ward with a cigarette between one's lips,
+one was beset by invalids in search of a light. Who lit the original
+vestal fire I do not know, but I am sure it was never extinguished in
+that hospital. Patients smoked and talked all night.</p>
+
+<p>We took our part with pleasure in this picnic life. Robin, with
+remarkable skill, had contrived to smuggle in various forbidden bottles,
+which contributed greatly to our popularity. One drink especially, from
+its innocuous appearance and stimulating properties, found great favour
+amongst the patients. It was known as "Iran," and consisted of equal
+parts of sour milk and brandy. A teetotaller might safely be seen with a
+long glass of creamy-looking fluid, yet Omar Khayy&aacute;m himself would not
+have despised a jug of it. Imbibing this, we used to hold polyglot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+pow-wows with the patients, in French, German, Arabic, Italian, and
+Turkish. Sugar and tea from our parcels also did much to promote
+cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>The recent explosion in Haidar Pasha station, which blew out all the
+windows of our (adjacent) hospital, and the first British air raid of
+1918 were frequent topics of discussion. With regard to these events we
+invented a beautiful lie, namely, that the station explosions were the
+result of bombardment by a new type of submarine we possessed, but that,
+<i>per contra</i>, the first air raid, which did no damage, was not carried
+out by British aircraft at all. We proved by assorted arguments in
+various languages that the bombs on Constantinople had come from German
+aeroplanes, the raid being a display of Hun frightfulness, to show what
+would happen if Turkish allegiance wavered over the thorny question of
+the disposal of the Black Sea fleet. Nothing was too improbable to be
+true in Constantinople, and nothing indeed was too absurd to be
+possible. Enver Pasha had made a monopoly in milk, and a corner in
+velvet. The new Sultan was intriguing for the downfall of the Young
+Turks. The funds of the Committee of Union and Progress had been sent to
+Switzerland, where a Turkish pound purchased thirteen francs of Swiss
+security, or half its face value. Fortunes were won and lost on the
+meteoric fluctuations of paper money. A lunatic inmate of the hospital
+(formerly a Smyrniote financier, driven to despair by the press gang)
+told me that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> he could make a million on the bourse if they only set him
+free for a few hours, and I daresay he was right. Anything might have
+happened during those summer days. Secret presses were engaged in
+printing broadsheets of revolution. The nearer the Germans got to Paris,
+the more persistent were the stories of their defeat. The air was
+electric with rumours. The story about German aeroplanes bombing
+Constantinople, which we had started in jest, was retailed to us later,
+in all earnestness, and with every detail to give it probability.
+Anything to the discredit of their ally found currency in the Turkish
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>An Ottoman cadet in my ward, for instance, used to impersonate a German
+officer ordering his dinner in a Turkish restaurant. He managed somehow
+to convey the swagger, and the stays, and the stiff neck. Clattering his
+sword behind him, he used to seat himself stiffly at a table and call
+haughtily for a waiter. Then, after glaring at the menu, he used to
+order&mdash;a dish of haricot beans. "Des haricots," he used to snap, with
+hand on sword-hilt in the exact and invariable Prussian manner.</p>
+
+<p>But to the last, the Germans were all-unconscious of what went on behind
+their corseted backs. Only at the time of the armistice, when they were
+pelted with rotten vegetables, did they realise that something was
+amiss.</p>
+
+<p>To return to our hospital. Our day began with rice and broth at six in
+the morning. At nine the visiting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> doctor made his rounds and the
+patients who needed medicines clamoured for them. Unless one made a
+fuss, however, one was left in perfect peace. At midday there was more
+rice and broth, with occasional lumps of meat. The afternoon was devoted
+to sleep, and the evenings to exercise in the garden, or intrigue. Rice
+and broth concluded the day. This sounds dull, but after two years of
+prison life, the hours seemed as crowded as a London season's. To begin
+with, we did not attempt to subsist on hospital fare, but commissioned
+various orderlies and friends to buy us food outside. Then there was the
+never-failing interest of making plans. A certain person raised our
+hopes to the zenith by telling us of the possibility of a boat calling
+for us at night, at a landing place just below the British cemetery. The
+idea was to embark in this boat, row across to a steamer, and there
+enter large sealed boxes in which we would pass the Customs up the
+Bosphorus, and then make Odessa. The plan was almost complete. The
+shipping people had been "squared." It only remained for us to select
+the spot from which to embark. With this object in view, we reconnoitred
+the British cemetery which abutted on the hospital grounds. It was then
+being used as an anti-aircraft station, and when, a few days later, the
+first air raid came, we saw the exact positions of the Turkish machine
+guns, spitting lead at our aircraft from among the Crimean graves. This
+air raid, and the atmosphere of "frightfulness" caused thereby,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> rather
+interfered with our escape plans. First of all we were forbidden to go
+near the British cemetery, and later other small privileges were
+curtailed which greatly "cramped our style." For some time we could not
+get in touch with the person already alluded to.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the arrival of our aeroplanes was a very stimulating sight.
+Everyone in hospital turned out to see the show.</p>
+
+<p>Crump! crump! Woof!&mdash;said the bombs.</p>
+
+<p>Woo-woo-woom!&mdash;answered the Archies.</p>
+
+<p>Kk-kk-kk-kk! chattered the machine guns.</p>
+
+<p>"God is great," muttered the hospital staff.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a gun!" cried one of the two British officers posing as
+lunatics (I have already related how they had pretended to hang
+themselves). "Give me a gun," he reiterated loudly&mdash;"this is all a plot
+to kill me, and I must defend myself!"</p>
+
+<p>Calmly and confidently our machines sailed through the barrage, dropped
+their bombs, turned to have a look at Constantinople, and then sailed
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The British lunatic shook his fist at them, as he was led back gibbering
+to his ward. The head doctor was much concerned as to his condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Every day," he told me&mdash;"some new madness takes that poor deluded
+creature. Eighteen pounds were paid to him recently and he promptly tore
+the notes in half and scattered them about the room. When he was asked
+if he wanted anything from the Embassy he wrote for a ton of carbolic
+soap, and half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> a ton of chocolate. On another occasion he jumped into
+the hospital pond with his pipe in his mouth, declaring he was on fire.
+I dare not send him to England without an escort, for he would do
+himself some injury. As to the other British lunatic, he has not spoken
+for five weeks. I do not know what is to be done."</p>
+
+<p>Neither did I, for I was not then aware of the patient's true condition,
+and had no desire to "butt in." They had lived for several months among
+the other madmen in hospital, and I thought it probable that they had
+really lost their reason.</p>
+
+<p>The lunatics' ward was a terrifying place. My experience of it, although
+limited to a few hours, was enough to last a lifetime. In order to
+secure drugs for "doping" sentries I complained of severe insomnia one
+day, and was sent to the mental specialist. While waiting for him, I
+noticed that one of the British lunatics was regarding me with
+unblinking furious eyes, while the other was praying&mdash;apparently for the
+souls of the damned. The Greek financier was singing softly to himself,
+and applauding himself. There is something very alarming about madness.
+One feels suddenly and closely what a narrow margin divides us from a
+world of terror. Their souls stand forlornly by their bodies, knocking
+at the door of intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>When the mental specialist arrived, I was seized by grave alarm. What if
+he should find me insane? . . .</p>
+
+<p>He held up a finger, tracing patterns in the air, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> told me to watch
+it closely. While I watched him, he watched me.</p>
+
+<p>"The moving finger writes," I thought, "and having writ . . ."</p>
+
+<p>"I can see your finger perfectly," I protested nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Far from it," said the enthusiastic specialist. "You are not following
+it with your eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"I am&mdash;indeed I am," said I, squinting at his fat forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"I am told you cannot sleep," continued my interlocutor. "You seem to me
+to be suffering from nervous exhaustion."</p>
+
+<p>"A little sleeping draught . . ." I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to observe you for a few days," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Not here?" I quavered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, here."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do not like the&mdash;other lunatics," said I, in a small voice.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually, to my great delight, I was allowed to remain where I was,
+and was given (as reward for the danger I had endured) several cachets
+of bromide and a few tablets of trional.</p>
+
+<p>I returned in triumph to my ward, and Robin and I laid our heads
+together. With the drugs we now possessed it would be possible to send
+our sentries to sleep when we were moved from hospital, if the person
+who was making plans for us to be taken on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> board a Black Sea steamer
+failed to communicate in time. But the question now arose as to how much
+of these drugs was suitable for the Turkish constitution. The object was
+to administer a sleeping draught, not a fatal dose. If we were
+transferred from Haidar Pasha we knew we should be sent for a time to
+the garrison camp of Psamattia (a suburb of Constantinople on the
+European side) and our intention was to inveigle our attendants into
+having lunch during our journey there, and ply them with Pilsener beer,
+suitably prepared, until they were somnolent and unsuspicious enough to
+make it feasible to bolt.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the bromide nor the trional could be tasted in cocoa or coffee,
+we discovered, so one evening, I regret to say, I carried out an
+experiment on a wounded patient, who was otherwise quite fit, although
+rather sleepless, by giving him a cachet of bromide and a tablet of
+trional in a cup of cocoa. In about half an hour his eyelids began to
+flicker, and he was soon sleeping like a lamb. Next morning he
+complained of a slight headache. Should he chance to read these lines I
+hope he will accept my apologies. <i>&Agrave; la guerre comme &agrave; la guerre.</i></p>
+
+<p>So now we had the beginning of a second plan, in case the box business
+<i>via</i> the Black Sea failed. But, in the event of escaping during our
+journey to Psamattia, we had no very clear idea of where to hide. That
+there were Greek and Jewish quarters in Galata and in Pera we knew, and
+also in the northern part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> of Stamboul, but the chances of detection in
+any of these localities were great, especially as we had no disguises at
+the time. There remained a possibility of hiding in the ruins of recent
+fires, but it was difficult to see how we were to live there. On the
+whole the Black Sea trip seemed to offer the most favourable
+opportunities of success. But to carry it out, we had to wait, and wait,
+and still to wait, until we heard from our agent again. And eventually
+the time came when we could wait no longer. . . .</p>
+
+<p>A week or two is nothing in Turkey, but unfortunately we had attracted a
+certain amount of undesirable attention in hospital by our popular
+supper-parties and reputed wealth. There was also a Bulgarian nurse who
+had an uncanny intuition about our intentions. She told the visiting
+doctor that two other nurses were in the habit of bringing us brandy.
+She also said we were both quite well and had never in fact been ill at
+all. The latter statement was true, but the former I can only attribute
+to pique, the brandy having come from other sources. However, this did
+not affect the fact that we were politely but firmly told that we had
+greatly benefited by our stay in hospital. This was equivalent to a
+notice of dismissal. We would have to go. Thereupon we both instantly
+pulled very long faces, and went to see the ear and nose specialist. He
+was our one hope of being allowed to stay on.</p>
+
+<p>While waiting for an interview, I had an opportunity of seeing an
+eminent army surgeon at work on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> Turkish soldiers. Let me preface
+this description by emphasising the fact that he <i>was</i> eminent. He was
+no rough bungler, but a clever practitioner, well known for his
+professional and human sympathy. This is the scene I saw.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor sat on a high stool, by the window, with a round reflector
+over his right eye. A glass table beside him was strewn with
+instruments. A lower stool seated his victims. In his hand he held a
+thing like a small glove-stretcher. Behind him two young assistants
+stood, looking like choir boys who had been fighting, in their robes of
+blood-stained white. The room was full of miserable shivering soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>A deaf old man takes the vacant seat in front of the doctor. The
+glove-stretcher darts into his ear. A question is asked. The old man
+gibbers in reply. Glove-stretcher darts into the other ear. Another
+question. More gibbering. Both his ears are soundly boxed, and he is
+sent away. The next is a goitre case, too unpleasant for description.
+Suddenly the attendants come forward, and pull off all his clothes. The
+doctor removes the reflector from his right eye, and stares for a moment
+at the ghastly skinny shape with a sack hanging from its throat. Then he
+dictates a prescription to one of the attendants, and seizes the next
+soldier. Prescription and clothes are thrown at the naked man, who walks
+out shivering, holding his apparel in his arms. Meanwhile another victim
+is already trembling on the stool. This man trembles so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> violently that
+he falls down in a faint. The attendants cuff him back to consciousness.
+Painfully he gets up and tries to face the instrument again. But as the
+glove-stretcher is being inserted into his nostril, he turns the colour
+of weak tea and again silently collapses. The doctor does not give him a
+second look. One of the attendants drags his limp body to a corner,
+while another patient takes the seat in front of the doctor. After a few
+more cases have been examined, the two attendants return to the
+unconscious man in the corner, drag him back to the doctor and hold his
+lolling head to the light, while the glove-stretcher does its work. Then
+he is pulled away, like a dummy from an arena, to the door of the
+consulting room, where (and here I confess I expected a scene) a woman
+awaited him. But she seemed to consider it all in the day's work.
+Perhaps poor Willie was subject to fainting fits. . . .</p>
+
+<p>I knew I would not faint, but I cannot say I took my turn on that seat
+with a light heart. The surgeon was alarmingly sudden, and already the
+room looked like a shambles.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To my relief, he used a new glove-stretcher.</p>
+
+<p>"Slightly deflected septum," he pronounced, and his diagnosis was later
+confirmed in London.</p>
+
+<p>"I hurt my nose boxing," I explained conversationally, "and cannot now
+breathe through it. I would like to stay&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Can't stay here." he said instantly and incisively; "no time to deal
+with your case."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't breathe through my nose."</p>
+
+<p>"Breathe through your mouth," he suggested kindly, but a little coldly.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is impossible to "wangle" a man who sits over you with a
+reflecting mirror screwed into his right eye. I vanished with suitable
+thanks.</p>
+
+<p>Robin had better luck with his ear. He could have stayed on in hospital
+and would very likely have been invalided back to England eventually.
+But he absolutely refused to exchange the comfortable security of a
+bodily affliction for the vivider joys of escape. In spite of my advice
+to stay in hospital, he decided, to my great delight, that we would try
+our luck together.</p>
+
+<p>All hope of remaining in hospital was now at an end.</p>
+
+<p>That evening at sunset we were in the garden, looking across the blue
+waters of the Marmora to the mosques and minarets of old Stamboul,
+flushed with the loveliest tints of pink.</p>
+
+<p>It was the last evening but one of Ramazan. To-morrow the crescent of
+the new moon would appear over the dome of San Sofia, as a sign to all
+that the fast had ended, and the time of rejoicing come. Between that
+moon and the next moon an unknown future lay before us. And whatever our
+fate, it was sure to be something exciting.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>OUR FIRST ESCAPE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Our crossing from Haidar Pasha to the garrison camp at Psamattia was a
+tame affair. Early in the day we had made up our minds that it would be
+unwise to escape, as well as unkind to our indulgent sentries: unwise,
+because we realised that if we bolted blindly from a restaurant, we
+would probably be caught at the first lodging-house at which we tried to
+gain admission; and unkind because, in common chivalry, we decided that
+our sentries were too trustful to be drugged.</p>
+
+<p>Our day, therefore, was spent in seeing the sights of Pera, gossiping
+over a cocktail bar, purchasing some illicit maps under cover of a large
+quantity of German publications, and generally learning the lie of the
+land. But it might be indiscreet even at this distance of time to
+describe in too great detail the sources from which we obtained our
+information. One name, however&mdash;like King Charles' head with Mr.
+Dick&mdash;will keep coming into this book. I cannot keep it out, because it
+is impossible to think of my escape and escapades without thinking of
+the gallant lady who made them possible.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Whitaker, as she then was (she is now Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> Paul), knew something
+about all the escapes which took place in Turkey, and a great deal about
+a great many of them. Against every kind of difficulty from foes, and
+constant discouragement from friends<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> she boldly championed the cause
+of our prisoners through the dark days of 1916 and 1917. She visited the
+sick in hospital, she carried plum puddings to our men working at San
+Stefano, she was a never-failing source of sympathy and encouragement.
+She sent messages for us, and wrote letters, and lent us money and
+clothes. She was the good angel of the English at Constantinople, a
+second&mdash;and more fortunate&mdash;Miss Cavell.</p>
+
+<p>And she was the <i>Deus ex machina</i> of my escapes. Having said this, I
+will say one thing more. I cannot here put down one-tenth of the daring
+work that Lady Paul did for me and others. The reason may be obvious to
+the reader; at any rate it is binding on me to say far less than I would
+wish.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the prisoners' camp at Psamattia, our first object was to
+get in touch with her whom we had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> already heard of as the guardian
+spirit of prisoners. With this object in view, we asked to be allowed to
+attend Sunday service at the English church. Religious worship, we
+pointed out, should not be interfered with, further than the necessities
+of war demanded. After some demur the Commandant agreed, and accordingly
+we went to church. Here it was<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> that we met our guardian angel for the
+first time. She trembled visibly when we mentioned our plans for escape,
+and I thought (little knowing her) that we had been rash to speak so
+frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"I strongly advise delay," she whispered&mdash;"but I will meet you again at
+the gardens in Stamboul in two days' time&mdash;four o'clock. I'll be reading
+a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Haid&eacute;, effendim, haid&eacute;, haid&eacute;</i>," said our sentry, and her last words
+were lost.</p>
+
+<p>Further conversation was impossible, but the forty-eight hours which
+followed were vivid with anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>How were we to manage to get to the gardens of the Seraglio? Would we
+meet her? Could we talk to her? Would she have a plan? . . .</p>
+
+<p>On the day appointed, Robin and I complained of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> toothache, and asked to
+be allowed to go into the city to see the dentist. We were at once
+granted permission.</p>
+
+<p>From the dentist's to the Seraglio garden was only a step, but we were
+four hours too early as yet to keep the rendezvous. However, a large
+lunch, in which our sentries shared, smoothed the way for a little
+shopping excursion into Pera. Here, amongst other things, we bought some
+black hair dye, which completed our arrangements for escape. Other
+paraphernalia, such as jack-knives, twenty fathoms of rope, maps,
+compasses, sand-shoes, chocolate and "dope," we had already acquired.
+Nothing now remained but to find a hiding place, when once we had
+escaped.</p>
+
+<p>At about three o'clock we were sitting in a caf&eacute;, eating ices, with our
+complacent sentries, who had every reason to be complacent for they had
+been sumptuously fed, as well as liberally tipped. They were quite
+willing to do anything in reason, and nothing could have been more
+natural than a stroll in the Seraglio gardens.</p>
+
+<p>But just then Robin began to get "Spanish 'flu," which was raging in the
+city. The symptoms were as sudden as they were unmistakable. Violent
+shivering, giddiness, weakness&mdash;all the ills that flesh is heir to,
+waylaid him at this vital juncture. He was completely incapable of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>There was no help for it. I left him shaking and shivering in the caf&eacute;,
+in charge of one of our two sentries,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> and, after a little persuasion
+and some palaver (during the course of which another bank-note changed
+hands) I induced the other sentry to accompany me for a stroll. Unless
+we walked in the gardens, I assured him, we should both fall ill with
+the deadly contagion of my friend. Nothing but fresh air and iced beer
+could avert that fever. On the way, therefore, we stopped for a glass
+and I managed to drop a small dose of potassium bromide into the
+sentry's mug before it was given to him.</p>
+
+<p>A little before four the sentry and I were smoking cigarettes on a seat
+in the Seraglio gardens quite close to the Stamboul entrance gate.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot day, with thunder-clouds hanging low. Toilers of the city
+passed us fanning themselves. Turkish officers had pushed back their
+heavy fur fezzes, and civilians wore handkerchiefs behind theirs. German
+ladies panted loudly, and even the <i>hanoums</i> appeared to be a little
+jaded: their small feet and great eyes, that so often twinkle in the
+streets, had grown dull with the oppression of the day. Small wonder my
+sentry nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, with a walk that no one could mistake, a tall and slim figure
+entered, dressed in white serge coat and skirt. I watched her, on the
+opposite footpath, strolling down the shady avenue with an insouciant
+grace. She held a novel and a little tasselled bag in her right hand.
+She sat down some two hundred yards away, and began reading calmly and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+coolly, apparently quite unconscious of the feverish world about her.</p>
+
+<p>With a hasty glance at my sentry, I rose and walked very slowly away. He
+woke at once, and followed. I stopped to look at some flowers, yawned,
+lit another cigarette and said to the sentry that it was too hot to
+walk. I intended to sit for a little in the shade on the opposite side
+of the road, and then we would go back to join our friend at the caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>We meandered across the road, and I sank into a seat beside the guardian
+angel. There was no room for the sentry, so he obligingly retired into
+the shrubbery behind.</p>
+
+<p>Without taking her eyes from her novel, she began by saying I was not to
+look at her, and that I was to speak very low, looking in the opposite
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>She then asked where my companion was, and on hearing he had the 'flu,
+she told me that she also had been attacked by it at the very moment
+that we had spoken to her at church, and that it was only with
+difficulty she had been able to keep the rendezvous to-day. I tried to
+thank her for coming, but she kept strictly to business, and
+concentrated our conversation to bare facts. Her news ranged from the
+world at war, to plans for Robin and me, in vivid glimpses of
+possibility. She covered continents in a phrase, and dealt with the
+plans of two captives in terse but sympathetic comment. When she had
+told me what she wanted to say, she opened her small bag<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> and took out a
+piece of paper, rolled up tight, which she flicked across to me without
+a moment's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better go now," she said.</p>
+
+<p>But my heart was brimming over with things unsaid.</p>
+
+<p>"I simply cannot thank&mdash;&mdash;" I began to stammer.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!" said she, to the novel on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>And so, with no salute to mark the great occasion, I left her. Neither
+of us had seen the other's face.</p>
+
+<p>Here I must apologise for purposely clouding the narrative. The plans I
+made are only public so far as they concern myself.</p>
+
+<p>On rejoining Robin, I found him palpitant and perturbed. The fever was
+at its height and he ought to have been in bed. Yet it was urgently
+necessary that evening, before returning, to make certain investigations
+in the native quarter of the city. How to do this without attracting the
+notice of the two sentries, perspiring but still perceptive, was a
+matter of great concern to me. I thought of saying that I was going to
+buy medicine for Robin, but in that case one of the sentries (probably
+Robin's, for my own had grown very somnolent with beer and bromide)
+would certainly accompany me. Then I bethought me of going to wash my
+hands in a place behind the caf&eacute; and slipping out of a back door. But
+there was no back door, and Robin's sentry had followed me to the
+wash-place, and stood stolidly by the door until I came out.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+<p>I sat down again, thinking and perspiring furiously,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and ordered
+more beer. But this time I failed to manipulate the bromide. Robin's
+sentry saw me with the packet in my hand and asked me what it was.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a medicine for reducing fat," said I, and of course after this I
+had to keep the drugged beer for myself. But the sedative did no harm.
+After sipping for some minutes I had a happy thought.</p>
+
+<p>There was a particular brand of cigarettes which were only obtainable at
+a few shops in Constantinople. I asked the waiter if he had them. He had
+not.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have a packet," I said, standing up&mdash;"there is a shop just down
+the street where I can get them."</p>
+
+<p>And without taking my hat or stick (as a proof of the innocence of my
+intentions) I strolled out of the caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>The sentries did not follow. It was too hot.</p>
+
+<p>I rushed down the crowded thoroughfare as if all the hounds of heaven
+were on my trail. I fled past policemen, dodged a tram, bolted up a
+side-street, and arrived gasping at the doorway I sought. After a hasty
+survey of the locality, so as to identify it again at need, I rushed
+back to the restaurant, buying a box of Bafra-Mad&egrave;ne cigarettes on the
+way. Robin was still shivering; the sentries were mopping their large
+faces. All was well. Our work was done.</p>
+
+<p>Trying not to look triumphant, I got Robin into a cab, and we drove back
+to Psamattia camp.</p>
+
+<p>During the next few days I thoroughly enjoyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> myself. Not so Robin, who
+was grappling with his fever. Later, however, when he was convalescent,
+we used to go down to the seashore together to bathe. In the evening, we
+used to sup off lobsters at a restaurant on the beach. In the water one
+felt almost free once more, and in the restaurant, when one was not
+gambling "double or quits" with the lobster-merchant as to whether we
+should pay him two pounds for his lobster or nothing at all, we were
+talking politics with other diners. Those days of Robin's convalescence
+were delightful. The moon was near its full, which is the season when
+lobsters ought to be eaten, and the climate was perfect, and our hopes
+were high.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Psamattia is one of the most westerly suburbs of Stamboul. From it, a
+maze of tortuous streets lead to the railway terminus of Sirkedji, and
+the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn. On the eastern side of the
+Golden Horn lie the European quarters of Galata and Pera. From our camp
+at Psamattia to the house where we intended to hide was a distance of
+five miles, and there were at least two police posts on the way. But
+with our hair dyed black (we had already effected this transformation,
+and it is astonishing how it changes one's appearance) and fezzes on our
+heads, we trusted to pass unnoticed as Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>Our plan had a definite and limited objective. We wanted to escape by
+night from Psamattia and hide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> in Constantinople. Once in hiding, we
+trusted to going by boat to Russia, or else going with brigands to the
+Mediterranean coast, where our patrols might pick us up. But the first
+object was to get away from the camp. Until this was achieved it was
+almost impossible to make definite arrangements. At first we had thought
+that it would be an easy matter to give our sentries the slip when we
+were out shopping. But when it came to the point, we felt scruples about
+bolting from men we had bribed and wheedled so often. All's fair in love
+and war, but yet if it could be avoided we did not want to abuse their
+trust in us.</p>
+
+<p>There remained the alternative of escaping by night from the house where
+we were interned. But when Robin had become fit enough to try (and of
+course he was all agog to be off at the first possible moment) we found
+the guards were more alert than we thought.</p>
+
+<p>Our situation was roughly this: We were housed in the Armenian
+Patriarchate, next to the Psamattia Fire Brigade, and there were
+sentries in every street to which access was possible, by craft or by
+climbing. The window of our room, which was directly over the doorway
+where the main guard lived, looked out on to a narrow street, across
+which there was another house, inhabitated by Russian prisoners of war.
+At first we thought it might be possible to pretend to go to the Russian
+house, and, while casually crossing the street, to mingle with the
+passers-by, and melt away unnoticed in the crowd. We tried this plan,
+but it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> no good. The guards on our doorway were alert, and followed
+our every movement. . . . To slip out with the Armenian funerals which
+used to go through our gateway was another project doomed to
+failure. . . . To get into the Armenian church, on the night before a
+burial, remove the occupant of a coffin and so pass out next morning in
+the centre of the funeral procession, was an idea which excited us for a
+time. But the melodrama we had planned could not be executed, because
+the church was locked and guarded at night. . . . To climb out of the
+back window of the Russian house also proved impossible, because a
+sentry stood outside it always. . . . Every point was watched. Two
+sentries armed with old Martini rifles (of archaic pattern but
+unpleasantly big bore) were posted directly below our window. Two more
+similarly equipped were opposite, at the door of the Russian house. One
+man with a new rifle was behind the Russian house. Two more were behind
+ours, and one was in a side street. There were also men on duty at the
+entrance to the Fire Brigade.</p>
+
+<p>After considering all sorts of methods we decided on a plan whose chief
+merit was its seeming impossibility. No one would have expected us to
+try it.</p>
+
+<p>Our idea was to climb out of our window at night, and by crossing some
+ten foot of wall-face, to gain the shelter of the roof of the next door
+house. This roof was railed by a parapet, behind which we could crouch.
+Along it we would creep, until we reached a cross-road<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> down the street.
+Here we would slip down a rope to the pavement, and although we would be
+visible to at least five sentries during our descent, it seemed probable
+that no particular sentry would consider himself responsible for the
+cross-roads, which was beyond their beat.</p>
+
+<p>To climb out of a window set in a blank wall, about thirty feet above a
+busy street where four sentries stood, did not seem a reasonable thing
+to do. But the wall was not as impassable as it seemed. Two little
+ledges of moulding ran along it, under our window-sill, so that we had a
+narrow yet sufficient foothold and handhold until we reached the roof of
+the adjoining house. And although we would be visible during our
+precarious transit of the wall-face, we knew that people rarely look up
+above their own height, and rarely look for things they don't expect.</p>
+
+<p>It was the night of the twenty-seventh of July, when a bright full moon
+rode over the sea behind our house, that we decided to make the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>The first point was to get out of the window without being seen. . . . A
+Colonel of the Russian Guards, a little man with a great heart,
+volunteered to help us. Directly we extinguished the lights in our room,
+he was to engage the sentries at the door of the opposite house, where
+he lived, in an animated conversation, keeping them interested, even by
+desperate measures if need be, until our first ten yards of climbing was
+successfully accomplished.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After a cordial good-bye, he left us. We took off our boots and slung
+them round our necks, drank a stirrup cup to our success, roped
+ourselves together, coiled the remainder of the rope round our waists,
+stuffed our pockets and knapsacks with our escaping gear, and then blew
+out our lamp, as if we were going to bed. Crouched under the window-sill
+we waited. . . . The sentries below us were sitting on stools in the
+street. The two men opposite were lolling against the doorpost, and the
+moon, rising behind our house, while still leaving the street in shadow,
+had just caught their faces, so that their every eyelash was visible. To
+them came the little Colonel, and only the top of his cap reached the
+moonlight. We heard his cheery voice. We saw both sentries looking down,
+presumably helping themselves to his cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>That waiting moment was very tense. An initial failure would have been
+deplorable, yet many things made failure likely. At such times as these,
+the confidence of one's companion counts for much, and I shall never
+forget Robin's bearing. Anyone who has been in similar circumstances
+will know what I mean. He went first out of the window. I followed an
+instant later. . . . And once the first step was taken, once my feet
+were on that two-inch ledge and my hands clung to the upper strip, the
+complexion of things altered completely. Anxiety vanished, leaving
+nothing but a thrill of pleasure. One was master of one's fate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At one moment we were in view of four sentries (two at our door and two
+opposite), a Turkish officer who had come to take the air at our
+doorway, and several passers-by in the street. But no one looked up. No
+one saw the two men, only five yards away, who clambered slowly along
+the string-course, like flies on a wall.</p>
+
+<p>After gaining the roof of the next house, we lay flat and breathless
+behind the parapet, and thanked God we had succeeded in&mdash;not making
+fools of ourselves, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>The parapet was lower than we thought, and in order to get the advantage
+of its cover it was necessary to remain absolutely prone in the gutter
+of the roof. In this position, from ten o'clock till half past eleven,
+we wriggled and wriggled along the house-tops, past a dead cat and other
+offensive objects, until at last we had covered the distance. Once,
+during this stalk, my rope got hitched up on a nail, and I had to
+wriggle back to free it. And once, having raised myself to take a look
+round, one of the sentries on the Russian house ran out into the street
+and started making a tremendous noise. I don't know what it was about,
+but it alarmed me very much, and condemned us to marble immobility for a
+time.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, we reached the end of our wriggle. But here a new
+difficulty confronted us. Directly overlooking the part of the roof from
+which we contemplated our descent, and less than ten yards away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> an
+officer of the Psamattia Fire Brigade sat at an open window, looking
+anxiously up and down the street, as if expecting someone to keep an
+appointment. His window was on a level with us. So intently did he stare
+that I thought he had seen us. But we lay dead-still behind the parapet,
+and it became apparent, as time passed and he still stood disconsolate
+by the window, that we were not the objects of his languishing
+regard. . . . And meanwhile the moon&mdash;the kindly old moon that sees so
+much&mdash;was creeping up the sky. Soon she would flood us with her
+radiance. Even a love-sick officer of the Fire Brigade could not fail to
+notice us across the narrow street, lit by the limelight of all the
+universe. For an hour this annoying Romeo kept watch, while we discussed
+the situation in tiny whispers, and cursed feminine unpunctuality. But
+at last, just as we had determined to "let go the painter" and take our
+chance, he began to yawn and stretch and look towards his bed, which we
+could see at the further end of his room. "You are tired of waiting: she
+isn't worth it!" I sent in thought-wave across the street. He seemed to
+hesitate, then he yawned again, and just as our protecting belt of
+shadow had narrowed to a yard, he gave up his hopes of Juliet, and
+retired.</p>
+
+<p>That was our moment.</p>
+
+<a name="ARMENIAN_PATRIARCHATE" id="ARMENIAN_PATRIARCHATE"></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 609px;">
+<img src="images/137.jpg" width="609" height="468" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h3>THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE AT PSAMATTIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.</h3>
+
+<p>We stood up, and made the rope fast to a convenient ring in the parapet.
+Traffic in the street had ceased. The sentries were huddled in their
+coats, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> it was a chilly summer night. Up street, a dog was yapping,
+and its voice seemed to stab the silence. Before stepping over the
+parapet I took a last look at the world I left and thanked God.</p>
+
+<p>The waiting was over. In two seconds' time we should have gained
+freedom, or a slug from some sentry's rifle.</p>
+
+<p>It took two seconds to slip down thirty feet of rope, and two seconds is
+a long time when your liberty, if not your life, is at stake. I half
+kicked down the sign-board of a shop in my descent, and Robin, who
+followed, completed the disaster. In our haste, we had cut our hands
+almost to the bone, and had made noise enough to wake the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Yet no one stirred. We were both in the street, and no one had moved.</p>
+
+<p>After two and a half years of captivity we were free men once more. The
+slothful years had vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Can you realise
+the miracle, liberty-loving reader, that passes in the mind of a man who
+thus suddenly realises his freedom? . . .</p>
+
+<p>I don't know what Robin thought, for we said nothing. We lit cigarettes
+and strolled away. But inside of me, the motors of the nervous system
+raced.</p>
+
+<p>The only other danger, in our hour and a half's walk to our destination,
+was being asked for passports by some policeman. In our character as
+polyglot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> mechanics, whenever we passed anyone, I found it a great
+relief to make some such remark as:</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein,</span>
+<span class="i0">Fest steht and treu die Wacht am Rhein.</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But Robin, who could not understand my German, paid little heed.</p>
+
+<p>Only once we did think we were likely to be re-caught. At about one in
+the morning, as we were passing the Fatih mosque, we heard a rattle on
+the cobbles behind us. A carriage was being galloped in our direction.
+It might well contain some of the Psamattia garrison. We doubled into
+some ruins, and lay there, while the clatter grew louder and louder.</p>
+
+<p>A few wisps of cloud crossed the moon, that had reached her zenith.
+Their silent shadows moved like ghosts across the desolation of the
+city. A cat was abroad. She saw us, and halted, with paw uplifted and
+blazing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then the carriage passed, empty, with a drunken driver. It rattled away
+into the night, and we emerged, and took our way through the streets of
+old Stamboul, under the chequered shade of vines.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> This applies in no way to the Americans, who did everything
+possible for our men before they left Constantinople. Their assistance
+was always of the most prompt and practical nature. It may be invidious
+to mention names in this light account of adventure, but I cannot
+refrain from giving myself the pleasure of saying how grateful I am to
+Mr. Hoffman Phillips, of the American Embassy. His name, as also the
+name of his chief, Mr. Morgenthau, is indissolubly connected with our
+early prisoners. I wish to thank him from the bottom of my heart, and I
+know many of all ranks who will join with me in this&mdash;far too
+meagre&mdash;tribute to his activities and ability.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Let no one think the clergyman in charge aided or abetted
+our secular efforts to escape. On the contrary, on a later occasion,
+when Robin, as a poor and distressed prisoner hiding from the Turks,
+endeavoured to find sanctuary for a few hours in the church, he was
+expelled therefrom, so that our enemies should not complain that the
+House of God was used for anything but worship.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> During the afternoon I lost over seven pounds in weight.</p></div>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>A CITY OF DISGUISES</h3>
+
+
+<p>We knocked softly at the door of the house that was to be our home, and
+then waited, flattened in the shadow below it, quite prepared for the
+worst. It was then four o'clock in the morning. It seemed too much to
+hope that we would be welcome.</p>
+
+<p>But we were. The door opened cautiously about one inch, and two little
+faces were seen, low down the crack. Behind them, someone held a light.</p>
+
+<p>Then the door was flung wide, and we saw on the stairs a whole family of
+friendly people, male and female, old and young, all in night dress, and
+all with arms outstretched in rapturous greeting. We might have been
+Prodigal Sons returning, instead of two strangers whose presence would
+be a source of continual danger.</p>
+
+<p>Hyppolit&eacute; and Ath&eacute;n&eacute;, the twins, aged eight, who had first peeped at us,
+now took us each by the hand, and led us upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"The last escaped prisoner we had here was a forger," said Hyppolit&eacute; to
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a friend of father's," added Ath&eacute;n&eacute; over her shoulder, "and he
+escaped from prison about six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> weeks ago. He was afraid that the police
+would find his tools, so he threw them all into our cistern. They are
+there now."</p>
+
+<p>We reached the top floor, and were shown by the twins into an apartment
+containing a double bed with a stuffy canopy of damask.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the family bedroom," they said.</p>
+
+<p>"And where are we to sleep?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute;, the proud owner of the house. "My sister and I
+and the twins were using the bed until your arrival, but now we will
+sleep in the passage."</p>
+
+<p>"The passage?" I echoed. "Haven't you any other beds, and were you all
+four using this one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. The other rooms are full of lodgers. There are three officers
+of the Turkish army here at present. But they won't disturb you, because
+they are hiding too."</p>
+
+<p>"Mon Dieu!" said I, sitting on the bed&mdash;"but your sister can't sleep in
+the passage, can she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, she's quite used to that sort of thing. It's safer also, in
+case the police come."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all the police," said Ath&eacute;n&eacute;, "even when they are not in
+uniform; I can recognise them by their boots."</p>
+
+<p>"And we are always on the look-out for them," added Hyppolit&eacute;. "If the
+police come to search the house you will have to get into the cistern."</p>
+
+<p>"Where the forger threw his tools," explained Ath&eacute;n&eacute;.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Coffee and cigarettes were produced, and ointment for our lacerated
+hands. We were made to feel quite at home. . . . The family stayed and
+talked to us until dawn broke. They thoroughly appreciated the story of
+the escape, and clapped their hands with glee at the idea of the Turks'
+amazement when they discovered that we had vanished, leaving no trace
+behind us.</p>
+
+<p>"They will never find the rope," said Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute;, "because the
+shopkeeper over whose shop it is will certainly cut it down and hide it,
+for fear of being asked questions."</p>
+
+<p>"And now we must thank the Blessed Saints for your escape," said an old
+lady who had not previously spoken.</p>
+
+<p>She went to a glass cupboard, opened it, and lit two candles. A scent of
+rose-leaves and incense came from the shrine, which contained oranges
+and ikons and Easter eggs and a large family Bible.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or two we all stood silent.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Just when I was expecting a prayer, the old lady blew out the candles
+and shut up the cupboard and crossed herself. The thanksgiving was over,
+and we dispersed with very cordial good-nights. I think Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute;
+wanted to kiss us, but we felt we had been through trials enough for the
+time and refused to offer even one cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The family retired to the passage and settled down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> to rest with squeaks
+and giggles, while Robin and I, after thanking God for all His mercies,
+with very humble and grateful hearts, threw ourselves down on the bed,
+too exhausted to undress, and slept the sleep of free men.</p>
+
+<p>Next instant, it seemed to me, although in reality two hours had
+elapsed, we were awakened by the twins, who looked on us as their
+especial charges, and thought us tremendous fun.</p>
+
+<p>"Time to get up," they said excitedly. "The house might be searched at
+any minute."</p>
+
+<p>Instantly we were afoot.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are the police?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a detective standing at the corner of our street," said
+Hyppolit&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"And they often come to see if all our lodgers are registered!" added
+his sister.</p>
+
+<p>We bundled our maps, compasses, and other belongings into a towel, and
+staggered downstairs, with fear and sleep battling for mastery in our
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>But in the pantry, we found the seniors of the household quite
+unconcerned. There was no imminent danger of a search. . . . On the
+other hand, there was the immediate prospect of breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>A saucepan was actually being buttered (and butter was worth its weight
+in gold) to make us an omelette. By now we had been thoroughly stirred
+from sleep, and realised how hungry we were. I forget how many omelettes
+we ate, or how much butter we used, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> I think that that charming
+breakfast cost a five-pound note, or thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>When it was over, an engaging sense of drowsiness began to creep over me
+again, but the twins were adamant.</p>
+
+<p>"You must practise getting into the cistern," said Hyppolit&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Like the forger did," chimed in Ath&eacute;n&eacute;&mdash;"and then you must arrange a
+hiding-place for your things."</p>
+
+<p>The worst of it was, that their suggestions were so practical. Obviously
+it was our duty to at once take all precautions.</p>
+
+<p>I consequently took off my clothes, and removing the lid of the cistern,
+I was let down through a hole in the floor into the waters below. In my
+descent I re-opened the wounds in my hands, and it was in no very
+cheerful mood that I found myself in darkness, with water up to my
+shoulders. I moved cautiously about, trying to imagine our feelings if
+fate drove us to this chilly and conventional hiding-place while
+detectives were conducting a search for us above. Then I barked my foot
+on something hard, and stooping down through the water I picked up a
+large block of pumicestone, which was doubtless the forger's engraving
+die. Something scurried on an unseen ledge; a rat no doubt. I felt I had
+seen enough of the cistern. Groping my way back to the lid, my fingers
+touched a little thing that cracked under them, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> instantly I felt a
+stinging pain. Whether it was a beetle or a sleepy wasp I did not stop
+to inquire.</p>
+
+<p>"Lemme get out," I bleated through the hole in the floor. . . . "Robin,"
+I said, when I was safe once more, "if ever we are driven down there, we
+must take something to counteract the evil spirits."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>All that morning we passed in the pantry, eating and dozing by snatches.</p>
+
+<p>Morning merged into afternoon, the afternoon lengthened into evening,
+and no policeman came. We were safe.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall, after sending Hyppolit&eacute; as a scout up the stairs to see
+that the other lodgers were not about, we ascended to our room again,
+and settled down definitely.</p>
+
+<p>Our stay, we then thought, might last several weeks, so as to give us
+leisure to weigh the reliability of the various routes and guides that
+offered. There was no particular hurry. The longer we stayed, the more
+likely the Turks would be to relax such measures as they had taken for
+our recapture.</p>
+
+<p>But we had reckoned without our host: the host of vermin. They were
+worse in this room than in any other place I have seen in Turkey, not
+excepting the lowest dungeons of the military prison, where they breed
+by the billion. Their voracity and vehemence made a prolonged stay
+impossible. Except for the first sleep of two hours, when exhaustion had
+made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> us insensible, we never thereafter had more than a single hour of
+uninterrupted rest.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the long and stifling nights of our stay, Robin and I lay in
+the stately double bed, wondering wearily how any man or woman alive
+could tolerate the creatures that crawled over its mahogany-posts and
+swarmed over its flowered damask. Every three-quarters of an hour, one
+or other of us used to light a candle, and add to the holocaust of
+creatures we had already slain.</p>
+
+<p>"What hunting?" I used to ask sleepily.</p>
+
+<p>"A couple of brace this time, and a cub I chopped in covert," Robin
+would say.</p>
+
+<p>"That makes twenty-two couple up to date&mdash;and the time is 12.35 a.m."</p>
+
+<p>Then at one o'clock it was Robin's turn to ask what sport I had had.</p>
+
+<p>"A sounder broke away under your pillow," I reported. "Six rideable boar
+and six squeakers."</p>
+
+<p>Ugh!</p>
+
+<p>Those first days of our liberty were a trying time. To the external
+irritation of insects were added the mental anxieties of our situation.
+What, for instance, would happen to the twins if we were caught in that
+house? And, again, was Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute; faithful? Would he be tempted by the
+reward offered for our recapture? At times we were not quite certain. He
+used to talk very gloomily about the risks and the cost of life.</p>
+
+<p>"Everyone is starving," he used to say thoughtfully&mdash;"even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> the
+policemen go hungry for bribes. A friend of mine, a policeman, said to
+me the other day: 'For the love of Allah find somebody for me to arrest.
+Among all the guilty and the innocent in this town, surely you can find
+somebody that we could threaten to arrest? Then we would share the
+proceeds.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say to that?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I said," he answered thoughtfully, "that I would do my best."</p>
+
+<p>"But what sort of man would you arrest?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Any sort of man. A drunkard perhaps, if I saw one, or a rich man, if I
+dared."</p>
+
+<p>"Rich men are apt to be dangerous," said I meaningly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But what can one do?" he asked, spreading out his hands. "One
+must live!"</p>
+
+<p>"And let live," said I, thinking suddenly of the bugs, and wondering
+what Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute; thought of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that I noticed his method of combating the household pets.</p>
+
+<p>Previously I had observed that the ends of his pyjamas (we always talked
+at night) were provided with strong tapes, which were tied close to his
+ankles; but the object of this fastening only became apparent when I
+noticed the excited throngs of insects on his elastic-sided boots. They
+could not get higher. They were balked of their blood. If he ever felt
+any discomfort, he merely tightened the tapes.</p>
+
+<p>After a careful study of Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute;'s psychology<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> (which was so full of
+outlooks new to me that I never achieved more than a glimpse into the
+pages of his past) I came to the conclusion that he was implicitly to be
+trusted. In his frail frame there burned a spirit of adventure and a
+courage that might "step from star to star." His soul had been born to
+live in a great man, only somehow it had made a mistake and taken a
+tenement instead of a manor-house to live in. . . .</p>
+
+<p>I think sunset and sunrise were the pleasantest hours in our new abode.
+It was possible then to draw back the blinds without any danger of being
+seen, and enjoy the cool of the evening and the magnificent view which
+our situation afforded. Our house, although it stood in a side street,
+commanded a prospect of the upper end of the Golden Horn, as well as a
+view of one of the most populous thoroughfares of the town.</p>
+
+<p>We used to sit and gaze at the twilit city, until the creeping darkness
+overtook us.</p>
+
+<p>If circulation be a test of a city's vitality, then Constantinople was
+certainly at a low ebb. The pedestrians seemed to get nowhere. They were
+hanging about, waiting for something to happen. The whole town was
+dead-tired, unspeakably bored of life as it had to be lived under the
+Young Turks. Constantinople was getting cross. . . . Cross, like someone
+who was tired of adulation from the wrong person. Some trick of sea and
+sun give her this human quality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> of sex. Anyone who has lived for long
+in her houses must feel her personality. She is the courtesan of
+conquerors, but inherent in her is some witchcraft, by which she weakens
+those who hold her, so that they die and are utterly exterminated, while
+she remains with her fadeless and fatal beauty, an Eastern Lorelei
+beside the Bosphorus. . . . She sapped the strength of the Roman Empire,
+she overthrew the dominion of the Greeks, and now, after a period of
+fretful wedlock, she was shaking herself free from the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>Something was going to happen soon. One felt it in the air.</p>
+
+<p>What happened to us, was that it became necessary to draw the blinds and
+light our candle, and search for the pestilence that crept by night.
+Presently our meal arrived, which was always a cheerful interlude, but
+it was as short as it was sweet, for courses were few, with famine
+prices prevailing. Afterwards we continued our hunting till dawn.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn, when the chill of morning had sent our sated enemies to sleep,
+there was another truce from trouble. We used to draw back the blinds
+again and sit at the window.</p>
+
+<p>I used to watch the pale sun on the horizon, fighting the mist-forms
+that clung heavily to earth and sea, and I felt that in the
+world-consciousness a similar contest swayed. The old ideas of
+government were being caught by a light that was pale now, but soon to
+grow luminous&mdash;a radiance that would dispel the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> night of war, and show
+us a new world, intangible yet, but dimly sensed.</p>
+
+<p>In the dim alleys and side streets below, where balconies overhung,
+shutting out the dawn, what a weight of woe there was! Famine and fire,
+twin angels of destruction that lurked in every by-way of the city, were
+waiting to take their toll. And the war went on for caged and free,
+while some starved and others made fortunes, and some became generals
+and others corpses. And the end of these things was vanity. <i>Vanitas
+vanitatum.</i></p>
+
+<p>The minaret of a mosque was directly opposite to me. Under sway of the
+sanctuary and the hour, the voice of the <i>muezzin</i> spoke to me in all
+its sincerity and unity of purpose. God was everywhere, all-pervasive,
+all-unseen, invisible only because He was so manifest. Evil of the night
+and glory of the dawn made His picture, the world. With new eyes I saw
+now this city grey with sin, and fresh with the promise of another day.</p>
+
+<p>From the house of that stern and simple faith that is the creed of
+one-fifth of the world, there came a sense of kinship with all the
+suffering under the sky. Reverence came to me also, and that brotherhood
+which is the message of the Great Teachers since time began. These
+thoughts were round me, a silent company, as I looked Mecca-wards, to
+the place of prayer. Then the heralds of the dawn alighted on the
+minaret, and their wings were amethyst and saffron.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> The night was over,
+and the <i>muezzin's</i> long, exultant call to worship died down with the
+increasing light.</p>
+
+<p>Another day had begun.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Not many days and nights did we tarry in Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute;'s house. Robin
+decided to try his luck by land. After various inquiries, he made
+arrangements with a Greek boy to board a melon-boat bound for Rodosto.
+His idea was to make that port, and thence work his way to Enos, where
+he hoped to be picked up by our patrol-boats. After many adventures and
+perils by land and sea, and a great deal of bad luck, he was caught at
+the town of Malgara. So ended a very gallant attempt, which ought to be
+set down in detail by him.</p>
+
+<p>I can only describe his appearance when he left. His disguise was a
+matter of great difficulty, for he is so tall and so Saxon that he
+always attracted notice in an Eastern crowd. An Arab ragamuffin seemed
+the r&ocirc;le best suited to him, and he accordingly exchanged his
+comparatively respectable clothes for a greasy old coat and a pair of
+repellent trousers. With a tattered fez well back on his head, and all
+his visible skin blackened with burnt cork, he looked an unspeakable
+scoundrel. But he was too villainous. He would have been immediately
+arrested for his appearance alone. A touch of genius, however, completed
+his make-up. . . . In his hands he carried a poor little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> bowl of curds
+and half a cucumber, which completely altered his ferocious air by
+adding the requisite touch of pathos. The edible emblems of innocence he
+carried transformed him completely into a sort of male Miss Muffet.</p>
+
+<p>No detective could have found heart to inquire where he was going. He
+was enough to make anyone cry.</p>
+
+<p>He left in a frightful hurry, for his boat was due to catch a certain
+tide, but we drank a stirrup cup to his success, and parted with much
+sadness on my side, not until the old lady before mentioned had lit a
+candle before the ikon of Saint Nicholas. . . .</p>
+
+<p>I was very sorry to see him go, but I was quite convinced (wrongly, as
+events proved) that the best chance of success lay in going to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The little Colonel of the Russian Guards had told us before we escaped
+that he was likely to be soon repatriated (for he was a person of
+influence in the Caucasus), and I felt sure that I could arrange to go
+as his servant, if no better scheme presented itself in the meanwhile.
+But there were many possibilities in the "city of disguises."</p>
+
+<p>During my stay with Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute; I had been learning history, as it is
+never written, but as it is most strangely lived by a people on the
+brink of dissolution and disaster. As an escaped prisoner I thought that
+delay in Constantinople&mdash;somewhere clean, however&mdash;would not be time
+wasted if one was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> in touch with the politics of the time. If the
+Russian scheme failed, there were other openings, by earth and air and
+water.</p>
+
+<p>But the first thing to do was to find a place where I could lay my head
+without getting it bitten.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The good angel of prisoners came to my assistance at this critical
+juncture in my affairs.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be disguised as a girl," said she&mdash;"I will buy you a wig at
+once."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about my figure?" I asked, "and my feet . . .?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some clothes were left with me at the beginning of the war," she
+answered, "which will fit you with the help of a tailor. And as to your
+shoes, your own will pass muster, with new bows. No one has had any
+proper shoes for ages here. But you will want&mdash;well, lots of other
+things."</p>
+
+<p>And I certainly <i>did</i> want a lot, before I looked at all presentable.
+After very careful shaving, I began to splash about confidently at my
+toilet table. There was Vesuvian black for the eyebrows, <i>bistre</i> for
+the eyelashes, <i>poudre violette</i>, rouge, carmine&mdash;more powder&mdash;more
+rouge&mdash;at last I showed my satisfied face to Miss Whitaker, who gave a
+cry of horror, and flatly refused to be seen in my company.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing for it but to wash my face and start again.</p>
+
+<p>This time I succeeded in making myself presentable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> although a blue
+streak of whisker seemed always slightly visible through the powder. The
+wig, however, helped matters greatly, and I arranged some ringlets on my
+shaven cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>The dressing-up was quite exciting. Silk and lace and whalebone,
+especially a lot of lace in front, was the basis on which I built. The
+foundations took some time in laying, but when finished I found to my
+delight that the coat and skirt belonging to Miss Whitaker's friend
+fitted my figure perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>A few details, invisible to my eyes, were quickly corrected, and I think
+that when I finally emerged, with large hat at a becoming angle, I did
+credit to my instructress.</p>
+
+<p>Gloves I had always to wear, of course, and a veil was advisable,
+chiefly to tone down my blinding beauty to the eyes of passers-by. Do
+what I would, however, I could not hide a certain artificiality in my
+appearance, which was most unfair to Miss Whitaker, considering that I
+was her companion. But I behaved as well as I possibly could.</p>
+
+<a name="GERMAN_GOVERNESS" id="GERMAN_GOVERNESS"></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 195px;">
+<img src="images/154.jpg" width="195" height="300" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Author as a German Governess</span></h3>
+
+<p>I learned how to walk in a ladylike fashion, and how to powder my nose
+in an engaging manner. My arms and legs had to be kept under various
+restraints. A mincing gait was soon acquired, but I found sitting still
+more awkward. My knees evinced an almost ineradicable tendency to cross
+themselves or sprawl, while my gloved forearms, to the last, felt as
+unwieldy as a baboon's. But everything I could I learned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> assiduously
+and in dead earnest, down to managing my veil, and patting my curls
+nicely in front of a looking-glass. It was so frightfully important not
+to make a false step.</p>
+
+<p>My only excuse for going about with Miss Whitaker at all was the
+complete success of the r&ocirc;le for which she had so skilfully prepared me.
+Never for a moment was there any suspicion of my identity.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion, in the early days of my disguise, when we were
+sight-seeing at Eyoub, some Turkish ladies stopped to talk to us. I
+remained silent, of course, but I watched them narrowly and came to the
+conclusion that they saw nothing amiss. My eyes, incidentally, were as
+well painted as theirs. Now, if two charming and worldly-wise <i>hanoums</i>
+cannot detect a flaw in one's form or features, it is unlikely that any
+mere male could be cleverer than they.</p>
+
+<p>The mere males, alas! were enthralled by my appearance. Once or twice an
+embarrassing situation was narrowly averted. The road behind the Pera
+Palace Hotel is dark, and we used to ascend it in fear and trembling.
+But although we were followed sometimes, no one ever presumed to speak
+to us.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Whitaker had found me by now a delightful roof, near the house in
+which I took my meals, and this place was free from all life smaller
+than a rat. Here I was able to make my plans in peace, with no fear of
+treachery, for, so cleverly had Miss Whitaker arranged matters, no one
+knew I was not a woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Mademoiselle Josephine, an eccentric German governess, who suffered
+from consumption (and therefore spoke very low and huskily) I used to
+pass my nights <i>&agrave; belle &eacute;toile</i>, after well-spent days in the docks or
+caf&eacute;s, where my plans were maturing. The stars in their courses seemed
+to be on my side. No longer, as when a fretful prisoner, did I think
+their quiet shining was a reminder of man's minuteness in the schemes of
+God. I felt now that man could make his destiny. And when that destiny
+was shaped by hands such as those that helped me, the world was a
+beautiful place. Good angels were here on earth, at "our own
+clay-shuttered doors." . . .</p>
+
+<p>Two little girls, to whom I used to bring chocolates, used to come up in
+the evening and kiss my hand, wishing me good-night. They thought I was
+the most amusing governess they had ever met. Their mother, a kind old
+lady who offered me cough mixtures, must have thought me rather odd, but
+then she was prepared to make allowances for foreigners, especially in
+war-time. To have a reason for wishing to be inconspicuous was nothing
+unusual in those days, whether one was German, Jew, or Greek, or male or
+female.</p>
+
+<p>Of various opportunities that came my way, the most practical and
+attractive was that suggested by the Russian Colonel. His repatriation
+to the Caucasus was now only a matter of days. He had not only got his
+own passport, but also a passport for a servant. That servant was to be
+myself. In order to discuss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> plans, we found the safest rendezvous was
+the open-air caf&eacute; of the Petits Champs. This place was crowded with
+"fashionable" people, and although both he and Miss Whitaker were
+constantly shadowed by detectives there was nothing at all suspicious in
+their being seen at tea-time in the company of an elegantly dressed
+German lady.</p>
+
+<p>The German lady was obviously not as young as she tried to appear, but
+then there was nothing unusual about that. She was also rather <i>gauche</i>
+in her movements, but this again was not out of keeping with the part.</p>
+
+<p>"In a fortnight's time we will be having tea at Tiflis," the Russian
+Colonel used to say. "I will raise two regiments of cavalry and take
+them to kill the Bolsheviks. You shall be my adjutant."</p>
+
+<p>"With the greatest pleasure in the world, <i>mon Colonel</i>. But please do
+not speak so loud."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that <i>sacr&eacute;</i> detective. I had forgotten him. Soon we will not have
+to think of such things."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but at the present moment your own particular shadow is trying to
+listen to what you are saying," I remarked in low tones.</p>
+
+<p>At once the Colonel's voice assumed a softer note, and his green eyes
+began to melt with tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais Josephine, ma petite, &eacute;coutes donc, je t'adore. . . .</i> There,
+he's passed. Everything is ready. I have got you a Russian soldier's
+uniform. You have only to put this on, and follow me on board when I
+go."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And if someone asks me who I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are my Georgian servant. And you can only speak Georgian. Just say
+this&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There followed a tongue-twisting sentence, which I tried to memorise.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the band played, and people passed, and inquisitive eyes were
+turned in our direction.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a spy who knows me," Miss Whitaker would say. "<i>Encore une
+tasse, mademoiselle? Non?</i> I think we ought to be going."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll settle the final details to-morrow," I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Right! Remember to let your beard grow. I couldn't have a smooth-faced
+orderly."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eh bien, mille mercis, Colonel</i>," said I, giving him my hand.</p>
+
+<p>He held it a moment, bowing, and looking inexpressible things.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ah, Josephine. . . .</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A demain, alors!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And with a simper I left my gallant and dapper cavalier to pay the
+bill.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>RECAPTURED</h3>
+
+
+<p>At five o'clock one morning Mlle. Josephine received a staggering note
+from the Russian Colonel to say that he had had to leave at a moment's
+notice for the Caucasus, under a Turkish guard, and that there was no
+prospect at all of his taking his dear Josephine with him.</p>
+
+<p>Thus my plan had failed. It was not the Colonel's fault, but it was
+annoying all the same. I had wasted both time and money, provisions and
+opportunities, and now I had to begin all over again.</p>
+
+<p>I decided that I would not continue in my disguise as a girl. It was too
+nerve-racking to begin with; and also, as a girl, I could not go down
+myself to the docks and arrange matters at first hand. I felt I must do
+something for myself. During the month that had elapsed Robin had been
+recaptured, other officers had escaped, the whole course of the war was
+changing, and here was I still <i>embusqu&eacute;</i> in Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>Something must be done, and, as usual, my good angel did it for
+me. . . . She bought me a small upturned moustache, spectacles,
+hair-dye, a second-hand suit, a stained white waistcoat which I
+ornamented with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> a large nickel gilt watch chain, a pair of old
+elastic-sided boots (price &pound;7), an ebony cane with a silver top, and a
+bowler hat which I perched rakishly askew. I was a Hungarian mechanic,
+out of a job. I had lost my place at the munition factory near San
+Stefano. But I was not down-hearted. My nails were oily and my
+antecedents doubtful, but I drank my beer and smoked my cigars and
+looked on life brightly through my spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>I did not avoid the Boche&mdash;in fact, I frequently drank beer with him.
+The non-Latin races are not inquisitive as a rule. They cared little
+whether I was Swiss or Dutch or Hungarian, and I frequently claimed all
+three nationalities. They did not even think it odd when, on one
+occasion, I said that I had been born in Scandinavia and later that I
+was a naturalised Hungarian, and later again (when a Jewish gentleman
+with military boots joined us, whom I recognised to be a Government
+informer, paid to pick up information) that I was really of Russian
+parentage and that I had a passport to this effect (which I showed to
+the company present) signed by Djevad Bey, the military commandant of
+Constantinople, permitting me to proceed to Russia and ordering that
+every facility should be given to me at the custom-house.</p>
+
+<p>This forged passport was a source of perplexity to me at the time, and
+later it was to be the cause of great discomfort. I had bought it for
+ten pounds from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> gentleman whose pumicestone engraving die reposed
+at the bottom of the cistern. It was an ornate affair, duly stamped, and
+sealed, and signed with a Turkish flourish. But I could not bring myself
+to believe that it would get me through the passport office, the
+<i>douane</i>, and the medical station at the entrance to the Bosphorus. Some
+hitch would certainly have occurred.</p>
+
+<p>However, it impressed the company in the caf&eacute;. People generally take one
+at one's own valuation, and the few secret agents to whom I spoke
+obviously considered that I was not a likely person to be blackmailed.
+With the Greeks I was certainly popular. The seedy-smart polyglot youth
+who was so liberal with his cigars (which were rather a rarity then) and
+so fond of talking politics and drinking beer was a <i>persona grata</i> in
+the circles he frequented. We talked much of revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"We will crucify the Young Turks," said a Greek to me one day, "and then
+eat them in little bits. We will&mdash;&mdash;" His expressive hands suddenly
+paused in mid-gesture, and his mouth dropped open, but only for an
+instant. He had seen a detective enter. "We will continue to preserve
+our dignity and remain calm whatever happens," he concluded neatly.</p>
+
+<p>But calm the Greeks certainly were not.</p>
+
+<p>In the cellar of a German hotel in Pera the Greek proprietor displayed
+one night a collection of rusty swords and old revolvers which were the
+nucleus of the New Age of brotherly love, when the streets were to run<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+with Turkish blood, and the Cross replace the Crescent in San Sophia. I
+was privileged to be present at this conclave of desperadoes. After
+swearing each other to eternal secrecy we sampled some of the contents
+of our host's cellar, and talked very big about what we were going to
+do. But our host, beyond dancing a hornpipe and declaring that he was
+going to murder everybody in the hotel (after they had paid their
+bills), propounded no very definite scheme.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this atmosphere of melodrama one emerged into the sombre, silent
+streets and went rather furtively home, feeling that there was something
+to be said for the Turks after all. But I need hardly say that no
+influential Greeks had a share in these proceedings: they were always on
+the side of moderation. One had been a fool to consort with fools.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the lattices of the harems it was said that Enver Pasha's day was
+done. The new Sultan had thrown him out of the palace, neck and crop.
+There was to be an inquiry into the means by which he had acquired huge
+farms round Constantinople&mdash;farms which were supposed to be purchased
+from the proceeds of a corner in milk that had killed many children. The
+Custodians of the Harem (and in Turkey these tall flat-chested
+individuals have positions of great power; the Chief of the White
+Custodians, for instance, is one of the high dignitaries of the Empire,
+and ranks with a Lord Chamberlain) had long been intriguing against the
+Committee and especially against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> German element with Enver at its
+head. . . . The Sultan was high in popular favour, and a dramatic
+suicide in the main street of Pera, which lifted a corner of the curtain
+hiding the unrest behind the scenes at the Imperial Palace, became a
+nine days' wonder, and gave rise to extraordinary rumours. A Turkish
+officer in full uniform had been seen running for dear life down the
+Grand Rue de Pera, pursued by policemen. The officer took refuge in the
+Turkish club, but he was refused asylum there. The policemen crowded
+into the entrance hall to arrest him, while the fugitive dashed upstairs
+to the card-room. Finding, however, that he could not avoid arrest, he
+threw himself out of the window, and was instantly killed on the
+pavement below. For some time, the corpse, dressed in the uniform of the
+Yildiz Guards, blocked the traffic of the city.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later a British air-raid gave the Constantinopolitans
+something new to think about. It was a stifling night, and I was dozing
+and listening to the mosquitoes that buzzed round me, when their drone
+seemed to grow louder and louder. I lay quite still, thinking that
+another raid would be too good to be true. But presently there was no
+doubt about it. Invisible, but very audible, the British squadron was
+sailing overhead. I jumped up and at that moment the Turks put up their
+barrage. Bang! Boom! Whizz! Kk&mdash;kk&mdash;kk! All the little voices of
+civilisation were speaking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Greeks crowded into the streets, and clapped their hands when the crash
+and rumble of a bomb was heard in the Turkish quarter of Stamboul.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sultan is going to make peace," they told me. "He has refused to
+gird on the Sword of Othman until the Committee of Union and Progress
+give an account of their funds."</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah for the English!" shouted others, quite undismayed by the
+shrapnel and falling pieces of shell.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some chance remarks, actually heard during air raids.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Here is the revolution at last!" said a Turkish officer in a
+chemist's shop in the Grand Rue de Pera, thinking the firing meant the
+downfall of Enver Pasha and his gang.</p>
+
+<p>"Bread costs four shillings a two-pound loaf," said an Armenian in the
+suburb of Chichli&mdash;"and as often as not there is a stone or half a mouse
+thrown into the four shillings' worth, for luck. May this gang of
+swindlers perish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Allah! send the English soon," wailed a Turkish widow in a hovel in
+Stamboul, where she was living with her five starving children. "We are
+being killed by inches now; it would be better to be killed quickly by
+bombs. The English cannot be worse than Enver."</p>
+
+<p>This, indeed, was the general opinion in Constantinople. Few of the
+population, outside the high officials, bore us any grudge. The thieving
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> Young Turks was on as vast a scale as their ambition. From needy
+adventurers they had become the prosperous potentates of an Empire. No
+country, surely, has ever been the prey of such desperate and determined
+men.</p>
+
+<p>The air raids were one of the first causes of their weakening hold on
+the people. The moral effect of these demonstrations was incalculable,
+coming as it did at a time when the Sultan was supposed to be in favour
+of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Peace, indeed, was the only faint hope of salvation that remained to the
+very poor. Milk had almost disappeared from the open market, and for
+some time past children had been exposed in the street, their mothers
+being unable to support them any longer.</p>
+
+<p>Each night, when I passed the Petits Champs, I saw a row of starving
+children, poor little living protests of humanity against the barbarisms
+of war and the cruelty of profiteers, huddled on the pavement, mute,
+uncomplaining, too weak to even ask for alms.</p>
+
+<p>And Bedri Bey, sometime Prefect of Police at Constantinople, when
+appealed to, said: "<i>Bah! Les pauvres, qu'ils cr&egrave;vent.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Although politics were interesting enough, escape was my first
+preoccupation. It was necessary to approach the harbour officials with
+caution, and they, on their side, although ready enough to help with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+suggestions, seemed inclined to shelve all the actual work on to a
+person or persons unknown, who remained in the background. It was very
+difficult to get at the principals.</p>
+
+<p>One of the chief agents of escape, however, I met one day in the Grand
+Rue de Pera. He was a most remarkable man. Intrigue was the breath of
+his nostrils, and although he had made thousands of pounds by helping
+rich refugees out of the country, he was really more interested in
+politics than pelf. He laid the groundwork of such knowledge as I
+acquired of Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>Incidentally, in the course of our conversation, a squad of Russian
+officer prisoners passed, accompanied by two sentries whom I knew quite
+well. So confident did I feel of not being recognised that I said a few
+words to one of the Russians, while their escort glanced at me with
+faces perfectly blank. They had not the vaguest idea who I was.</p>
+
+<p>To get away from Constantinople, the escape merchant told me, was a
+matter of passing the custom house. Formerly this had been easy, but now
+every ship was searched from stem to stern and from deck to keelson.
+Also every skipper was a Mohammedan. All Christians had been recently
+deprived of their positions.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Mohammedans are not an unbribable people, and something might
+possibly be done for me. In fact, that very day he had learnt of a
+certain Lazz<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> shipmaster, who was going over to the Caucasus in his own
+boat, and who would be prepared to take a few passengers for a
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the same day I heard that two other officers, who had escaped
+about a week before (by bolting under a train in Haidar Pasha railway
+station), were already in touch with this Lazz. I went to see them early
+the following morning and we agreed to charter the boat between us, so
+as to reduce expenses.</p>
+
+<p>My two friends were living in the house of one Theodore, a Greek waiter
+at a restaurant in Sirkedji, who believed that they, as well as myself,
+were Germans.</p>
+
+<p>The Lazz, who came to visit us, was absolutely astounded when we
+proclaimed ourselves as British officers: he had been under the
+impression that we were some sort of Turkish subject. However, all
+passengers were grist to his mill, and British officers who talked
+glibly of gold payments were not people to be neglected. After haggling
+about terms, we made an appointment for the next day, and parted with
+some cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow, punctual to our appointments, the Lazz and I again
+arrived at Theodore's house to confer further with my two friends.</p>
+
+<p>As it was a very hot afternoon, I took off my coat and my false
+moustache, before plunging into the details of our departure. It was
+evident that the Lazz<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> was in a hurry to be off. His cargo was complete,
+he said. He had only to take in petrol for his motor before leaving on
+the following day. There remained the question of money, and after much
+argument we settled to pay him five hundred pounds on arrival at the
+port of Poti in the Caucasus, and one hundred pounds advance for fuel
+immediately. He was to provide the disguises necessary for us to pass
+the customs at the Bosphorus. We were each of us to don a black dress
+and a black veil and to sit in a row in his cabin, refusing to move or
+speak if interrogated. Muslim ladies, he assured us, had frequently
+refused to undergo any scrutiny whatever at the customs, and provided
+they were vouched for by some responsible person on board, the gallant
+excisemen were ready to let them pass. As his very own wives, said the
+Lazz, no harm could possibly come to us, provided of course we remained
+sitting, and silent, throughout the inspection.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed a very satisfactory scheme, for obviously whatever risks we
+ran, our friend the Lazz would run them too.</p>
+
+<p>By evening our pact was complete. We handed over a hundred pounds, and
+the Lazz promised faithfully that he would have the boat ready and our
+disguises prepared by nightfall on the following day, when we would sail
+for Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had the money changed hands before I noticed a suspicious-looking
+individual in the street<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> below. Presently he was joined by another
+detective, whom I recognised.</p>
+
+<p>Things looked ugly.</p>
+
+<p>We took the Lazz cautiously to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know anything about those men?" we asked.</p>
+
+<p>He turned deathly pale, but swore he had never seen them before. I do
+not think he had. His fear was genuine.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me get out! Let me get out!" he said, making a bolt for the door.</p>
+
+<p>And he went. There was no use in trying to stop him.</p>
+
+<p>One of my friends and I now went downstairs, while the third member of
+our party stayed behind to hide a few odds and ends of gear, in case the
+house was searched.</p>
+
+<p>We waited downstairs, making light of our fears, and fighting a
+premonition of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there was a loud tapping on the door. Even if it were the
+police, I thought, our disguises would carry us through. Then I noticed
+that my friend was in shirt-sleeves. I put on my spectacles and tried to
+stick on my moustache again, but the gum from it had gone.</p>
+
+<p>The rapping at the door became louder and louder, and presently it was
+opened by a flustered female.</p>
+
+<p>In trooped six detectives, including the man I had recognised, who was
+apparently their leader.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There are some British officers hiding here," he said fiercely to the
+woman; "show me where they are."</p>
+
+<p>While this scene was passing in the entrance-hall, we were behind the
+door of the pantry.</p>
+
+<p>A detective came in and caught my friend. Meanwhile two others were
+pommelling the unfortunate woman to make her say where we were. She kept
+pleading that she knew nothing about any British officers.</p>
+
+<p>Another instant, and I should have been found. So I came out from behind
+the pantry door, and crossed the entrance hall.</p>
+
+<p>In the doorway stood a burly policeman, who said "<i>Yok, yok</i>," when I
+attempted to pass him.</p>
+
+<p>Had I had the requisite nerve I believe I could have bluffed this man.
+Some phrase with <i>schweinhund</i> in it would probably have got me past.
+But I hesitated, and was lost.</p>
+
+<p>My hand flew to my breast pocket, where the forged passport lay, and my
+false moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"Seize that man and search him," said the head detective, looking over
+the banisters. Then he went upstairs, dragging the woman with him.</p>
+
+<p>My arms were instantly caught from behind, while a seedy-looking youth,
+who was probably a pick-pocket in his spare time, ran his fingers over
+my clothes. My wad of money, watch, compass, passport, moustache,
+everything was put into a small canvas bag, and I was then taken to the
+opposite corner of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> room to that in which my friend sat, and told
+not to move under pain of death. A levelled revolver emphasised the
+injunction.</p>
+
+<a name="HUNGARIAN_MECHANIC" id="HUNGARIAN_MECHANIC"></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 178px;">
+<img src="images/170.jpg" width="178" height="290" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Author as a Hungarian Mechanic</span></h3>
+
+<p>Presently there were cries of women heard from the attic, then there was
+a loud crash, and I knew that the third member of our party had fallen
+through the trapdoor leading to the roof.</p>
+
+<p>That was the last of my freedom for the time. Thus suddenly my five
+weeks' scheming was ended.</p>
+
+<p>Each of us was taken charge of by two policemen, who linked their arms
+in ours. Presently the order to march was given, and a dismal
+procession, consisting of two weeping women, a seedy-smart individual in
+a bowler hat, two youths in slippers and shirt-sleeves, and a Greek
+waiter, could be seen wending their way to the Central Gaol of
+Stamboul.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Before leaving, we had protested strongly against the treatment of the
+women in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"But they are Turkish subjects," said the detectives.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, they are women," we protested.</p>
+
+<p>But this had little effect. Theodore and his unfortunate family were
+marched off behind us to the Central Gaol. I think, however, that our
+protest was not quite in vain, for it gave the women courage. When I
+last saw them, before being taken to the Chief of Police, they had dried
+their tears. Eventually they were released, but not, alas! until they
+had endured much suffering.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief of Police congratulated us on being safe once more in Turkish
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we are comfortably back in prison," I said with a faint smile,
+"and therefore there is surely no harm in giving us back the personal
+trifles that the detectives took from us."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot give you your papers," he said. "There is a forged passport
+here, amongst other things."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, do as you like about that," I said, shrugging my shoulders,
+"but surely my empty pocket-book and my watch might be returned."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To this he agreed, whereupon he handed me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) My pocket-book, containing five pounds hidden in the lining.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) My watch, and a compass, which he mistook for another timepiece.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) My false moustache, which had been captured on my person.</p>
+
+<p>I was in an agony of anxiety about this moustache. Had the police
+inquired at the only two hairdressers' where such things were made, they
+would have found that Miss Whitaker had ordered it for me only ten days
+before. But now it was safely in my possession again. I had the only
+connecting link of evidence that might incriminate Miss Whitaker in my
+trouser pocket, and was tearing it to shreds as I talked to the Chief of
+Police.</p>
+
+<p>The interview passed on a note of felicitation, until the very end.
+After praising the smart way his men had surrounded the house, and
+receiving his congratulations on our escapes, just as if the whole thing
+was a game, we said that there was one criticism we had to make on
+police methods, and that was their treatment of women.</p>
+
+<p>"They are Turkish subjects," snapped the Chief of Police, suddenly
+showing his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"They are women," we retorted, "and they are innocent. If they are
+maltreated&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know how to manage my affairs," he said with a gasp of annoyance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. But if they are maltreated you will be responsible after the
+war."</p>
+
+<p>To this he made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>We were removed without further ado, and after being photographed and
+measured in the most approved fashion for criminals, we were taken up
+long flights of stairs, and across a roof, to the quarters for prisoners
+awaiting trial. Here we were allotted separate cells, where we were to
+pass the next few days in strict isolation.</p>
+
+<p>To my amazement (for I knew something of Turkish prisons from a previous
+experience, not here recorded) these cells were scrupulously clean. A
+bed, a table, and a chair were in each apartment, all very firm and
+foursquare, as if designed to withstand any access of fury or despair on
+the prisoner's part. There was electric light in the ceiling, covered
+with wire netting. Walls and woodwork were of a neutral colour. The
+windows, which were barred, had a convenient arrangement for regulating
+the ventilation. The heavy door, which admitted no sound, was provided
+with a sliding hatch, which could be opened by the warders at will for
+purposes of investigation. Everything was hideously efficient.</p>
+
+<p>Turkey is a country of surprises, but I was not prepared for this. I
+would have preferred something more picturesque. One's mind, after the
+testing climax of recapture, craves for new doses of excitement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The brain of a criminal, after he has been apprehended, must be a
+turmoil of thought. He curses his stupidity, or his luck, or his
+associates. He longs to explain and defend himself. Instead of this, he
+is left in silence in a drab room, with no company but his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>My own thoughts were most unpleasant. I had failed miserably and
+innocent people were suffering as the result.</p>
+
+<p>After five weeks of effort I was farther than ever from escape. Worse
+than all, Miss Whitaker was in danger. Never again shall I pass such
+dismal hours. I see myself now, seated on that solid chair with head on
+arms, bent over that efficient table. A prisoner's heart must soon turn
+to stone.</p>
+
+<p>But although our surroundings were inhuman, one of our gaolers had a
+generous heart. He opened the slot in my door merely to say he was sorry
+about it all, and that the women were all right. It is little actions
+such as these that so often light the darkest hours of life. The man was
+a European Turk.</p>
+
+<p>It was urgently necessary to communicate with my fellow-prisoners, in
+order to arrange to tell the same story. My friend next door solved the
+problem by bawling up through his barred window at the top of his voice
+that he would leave a note for me in the wash-place.</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are!" I howled in answer, and instantly the slot of my door
+opened, and I had to explain that I was singing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Already, interest was beginning to creep back into one's life. I found
+the note in the wash-place, read it secretly, thought over my answer,
+and transcribed the message on to a cigarette paper. Having no writing
+material, I used the end of a match dipped into an ink prepared from
+tobacco juice and ash. By these simple means we established a regular
+means of communication and before forty-eight hours of our strict
+seclusion had elapsed we were all three in possession of a complete,
+circumstantial, and fictitious account of our adventures prior to
+capture.</p>
+
+<p>When not engaged on reminiscences, I was generally pacing my cell, or
+trying to invent some new form of exercise to keep myself fit. But at
+times energy failed and one felt inclined to gnash one's teeth at the
+futility of it all.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when I was feeling inclined to gnash my teeth, the slot in my
+door was furtively withdrawn, and, instead of a gaoler, a very comely
+vision appeared at the observation hatch. A pair of laughing black eyes
+were looking in on me. She wrinkled her nose, and laughed. I jumped up,
+thinking I was dreaming, and hoping that the dream would continue. At
+the same moment something dropped on to my floor. Then the trap door was
+softly shut to.</p>
+
+<p>I found a tiny stump of lead pencil. That was proof of the reality of my
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>Countless excuses to leave my cell, and voluminous correspondence with
+the pencil's aid eventually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> enabled me to find out that she was an
+Armenian girl, awaiting trial, who took a deep interest in us. At great
+risk to herself, she had provided the three of us with writing
+instruments. Except for a brief glimpse, and a mumbled word, I was never
+able to thank her, however, owing to circumstances beyond our control.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day we were transferred to the Military Prison in the
+Square of the Seraskerat.</p>
+
+<p>As usual in Turkey, our move was sudden and unexpected. That morning, on
+complaining at mid-day that I had as yet received no food, I was told
+that <i>inshallah</i>&mdash;if God pleased&mdash;it would arrive in due course.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of a belated breakfast, however, a <i>posse</i> of policemen arrived,
+and we started on our journeys again: my friends still in their
+shirt-sleeves and slippers, and myself still in my bowler hat, although
+I did not now wear it so rakishly.</p>
+
+<p>But we were fairly cheery. We had learnt (no matter how) that the
+females of Theodore's family would soon be released, and that Theodore
+himself, although still in duress, would not suffer any extreme fate.
+Also, it was by now fairly obvious that Miss Whitaker would not be
+apprehended, as sufficient evidence was not obtainable against her. She
+had covered her tracks too well. All things considered, there was no
+cause for depression.</p>
+
+<p>But waiting is hungry work. That afternoon still saw us, fretful and
+unfed, waiting outside the office<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> of Djevad Bey, the Military
+Commandant of Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>At last I was taken into an ornate room, where I had my first talk with
+this redoubtable individual, who was popularly supposed to be the
+hangman of the Young Turks. Anyone less like an executioner I have never
+seen. He was plump, well-dressed, with humorous grey eyes. He wore long,
+rather well-fitting boots, and smoked his cigarettes from a long amber
+holder. He also had a long amber moustache, which was being trained
+Kaiser-wise.</p>
+
+<p>I stood before him at attention.</p>
+
+<p>"About this forged passport," he began&mdash;"do gentlemen in your country
+forge each other's signatures?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not usual," I admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you, as an English gentleman, surely did not counterfeit my
+writing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no! I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how do you account for this passport being in your possession?"</p>
+
+<p>I remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Who forged it?" he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"May I look?" said I. "Is that really your signature?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed. With it you could easily have got out of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"What an idiot I was not to use it!" I said with quite unfeigned
+annoyance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You were!" he laughed&mdash;"they would have passed you straight through the
+Customs on seeing this."</p>
+
+<p>I felt very faint at this moment, and staggered against the table. But I
+recovered after an instant. I quite forget his next few remarks, but I
+know that I committed myself to a story that I had bought the passport
+from a man in a restaurant whom I could not now recognise.</p>
+
+<p>"But where have you been living all these weeks?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I was living in the ruins near the Fatih mosque," I said glibly&mdash;"and I
+used to lunch and dine at various caf&eacute;s in the city, a different one
+every day. It was in one of these places that I bought the passport."</p>
+
+<p>Djevad Bey considered this statement for a moment. There was a nasty
+look in his eye when he spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never rest until I know who it is who can forge my signature so
+well," he said&mdash;"and until I know, I am afraid you will be very
+uncomfortable, for by law you are in the position of a common
+malefactor."</p>
+
+<p>"By law I am in the position of a prisoner of war," I answered&mdash;"and as
+such, I am liable to a fortnight's simple imprisonment, for attempting
+to escape. The Turkish Government signed this agreement only a few
+months ago with the British representatives at Berne."</p>
+
+<p>"A man who forges another's name is not an officer, but a forger," he
+said meaningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Say what you like, and do what you like," I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> answered&mdash;"I am in your
+power. But one thing I ask, and that is, that if you punish me, you
+should liberate the innocent Theodore and his family. True, we were
+found in their house, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot believe what you say," said Djevad Bey thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Then:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, as man to man, won't you tell me who forged that passport?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have just called me a liar," said I. "That ends the matter."</p>
+
+<p>And with an all-is-over-between-us air I left the room, feeling dizzy
+and uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>It was then four o'clock in the afternoon, and I had not yet eaten. I
+did not feel at all amused at the prospect of the Military Prison.</p>
+
+<p>I was taken downstairs into the darkness, on entering this inferno of
+the damned of Enver Pasha. There were cries and shouts down there, and
+men scrambling for food, and other men who looked like wild animals,
+behind bars. A swarthy custodian took my name, and I then proceeded,
+down a long corridor, until my escort reached an iron portal such as
+Dante imagined long ago.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. . . .</i> The gates had clanged
+behind me, and I was in a long, low room below ground level, airless,
+ill-lit, filthy with tomato skins and bits of bread. Well-fed rats were
+scurrying amongst the garbage, and badly-fed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> prisoners were pacing the
+room forlornly, or twiddling their thumbs, or scratching themselves, or
+gnawing crusts of bread.</p>
+
+<p>They gathered round me, clamouring for news and cigarettes. In less than
+no time they had picked my pockets. They had no more morals than
+monkeys. Poor devils! who could blame them, living as they did down
+there, where no rumours are heard of the outside world, except the cries
+of beaten men and the dull sound of wood on flesh?</p>
+
+<p>"What are you in for?" they asked me.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgery," said I, not to be outdone by any desperado present.</p>
+
+<p>One man, however, confessed to murder, having cut a small boy's throat a
+few months before. With him I could not compete. But the most of us were
+fraudulent contractors, spies, petty swindlers and the like. Our morals,
+as I have said, were practically <i>nil</i>. Yet I noticed that a Jew lived
+quite apart, and was shunned by everybody. By trade he was a brigand,
+but this was no slur on his character as a criminal: the failing that
+had led to ostracism was that he pilfered the other prisoners' tomatoes.
+That was really beyond a joke. . . .</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One of my newly found friends took me to a bed, consisting of two planks
+on an iron frame, which he said I could have for my very, very own. He
+also gave me a piece of bread and some water. On beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> to eat I at
+once realised how hungry I was, and inquired how I should obtain further
+nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Luxuries are very difficult to obtain," he said; "how much money have
+you got?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-five piastres,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>" I answered.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled a long face.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't go far. But every evening at eight a boy comes round with
+the scraps left over from the Officers' Restaurant. Otherwise you will
+live on bread and tomatoes."</p>
+
+<p>"What about bedding?" I asked, to change the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Bedding!" he said, looking at me as if I was a perfect idiot. "Do you
+mean to say you have come here without any bedding?"</p>
+
+<p>I admitted I had, but felt too exhausted to explain.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One was utterly lost in that dungeon. Even when the war ended, would one
+be found? I doubted it. Yet as I would naturally never reveal the
+forger's name, it seemed unlikely that I would get out. . . . Then I
+thought of my companions. I imagined them happily together, in some
+place where one could see the sky. . . . As for me, I might languish
+down here for ever. Obviously something should be done.</p>
+
+<p>But what? I rose (rather hastily, for on looking between the planks of
+my bed, I noticed that the crack was entirely filled with battalions of
+board beasts in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> line, waiting for a night attack), and began to pace
+our narrow and nasty apartment. A group of prisoners were cooking some
+pitiful mess by the window. Four others played poker with a very greasy
+pack. One was twiddling his thumbs very fast, and I suddenly recollected
+that he had been twiddling his thumbs very fast half an hour ago, when I
+had first seen him. The lonely Jew was removing lice from the seams of
+his coat, and throwing his quarry airily about the room.</p>
+
+<p>Then I noticed that besides ourselves, there were other prisoners even
+more unfortunate. There had been so much to see in my new surroundings
+that I had not noticed the people in chains. . . . One side of our room
+opened out on to some half-dozen cubicles, each of which contained a
+prisoner in chains. These cells had no light or ventilation. They
+measured six feet in length by four in breadth. In solitude and
+obscurity, fettered by wrist and ankle to shackles that weighed a
+hundredweight, human beings lived there&mdash;and are still living for aught
+I know&mdash;for months and even years, until death released them. These men
+were ravenous and verminous, but they had by no means lost their hope
+and faith. I shall never hear the hymn&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thy rule, O Christ, begin,</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Break with Thine iron rod</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;The tyrannies of sin . . ."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>without remembering that an Armenian lad said those words to me, lying
+in chains in one of these cells.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> With another prisoner, a Greek, who
+had endured eleven months of this torture, I also had some speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the war will be over soon," he said. "My God, how good this
+cigarette of yours tastes! I haven't touched tobacco for a month. But be
+careful. The sentries must not see you speaking to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the chains were bad at first," he continued when the sentry's back
+was turned, "but one gets used to anything in time. And I have had time
+enough. It takes a lot to kill a healthy man. Before I came in here I
+used to be strong and well. I used to ride two hours every day, on my
+own horses. Now my horses have gone to feed the Turkish Army and I can
+hardly drag my chains as far as the water-tap. But God is great. . . ."</p>
+
+<p>God is great! <i>Allahu akbar!</i></p>
+
+<p>I determined to get away from that dungeon at all costs, if for no other
+reason than because I had to survive to write about it.</p>
+
+<p>I went to the big gate, and tried to bluff the sentry to let me go to
+see the Commandant. But a clean face and a full stomach are practically
+necessary to a <i>d&eacute;bonnaire</i> appearance. When one is scrubby and starved
+it is almost impossible to succeed in "wangling." I stared at the sentry
+through my eyeglass, and I offered him my twenty-five piastres as if I
+had plenty more <i>baksheesh</i> to give to a good boy, but I utterly and
+dismally failed to impress him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Yok, yok, yok</i>," he said, looking at me as one might look at an
+orang-outang that has</p>
+
+<div class="bbox">DO NOT IRRITATE THIS ANIMAL</div>
+
+<p>written over its cage.</p>
+
+<p>I gibbered in impotent rage, and then went and put my head under a tap.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, while I was drying my head with my handkerchief, I saw
+some barbers come to the big gate. They stood there, clapping and
+clacking their strops. Instantly, my fellow-prisoners rushed to the gate
+as if they had heard the beating of the wings of some angel of
+deliverance. This was apparently the occasion of their weekly shave,
+when egress to the corridor was permitted, the barbers naturally not
+wishing to go inside our loathsome room.</p>
+
+<p>Taking this tide in the affairs of men at the flood, I found it led on
+to fortune. I was in the corridor with six other prisoners, and a barber
+confronted me with a razor in his hand. He whetted his steel
+expectantly, but I would have none of him, and seized a passing official
+by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>He was a dog-collar gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>A dog-collar gentleman, I must explain, is Authority Incarnate. On his
+swelling chest he wears a crescent tablet of brass, with the one word
+<i>Quanun</i> inscribed thereon. <i>Quanun</i> means "law," and the wearer of this
+badge is responsible for public decorum of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> every kind. If a Turkish
+officer be seen drinking alcohol in uniform, or playing cards, or
+flirting, or talking disrespectfully of the Germans, or indulging in any
+other prohibited amusement, he is instantly arrested by the dog-collar
+gentleman, and brought to prison. In his official capacity, the
+dog-collar gentleman is one of the most important personages in Turkey:
+policeman, pussfoot and prude in one.</p>
+
+<p>"There is some mistake," I said excitedly. "I am a British officer, and
+have been put in a room with criminals."</p>
+
+<p>"You a British officer?" said the dog-collar man incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"A captain of cavalry," said I, slipping him the twenty-five piastre
+note.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pekke, Effendim</i>," he answered. "Very good, sir, I will see what can
+be done."</p>
+
+<p>I had burnt my boats now.</p>
+
+<p>About ten minutes later, just as I was flatly refusing to either be
+shaved or to return through the gate, a sergeant-major and a squad of
+soldiers arrived and bore me off to the Prison Commandant.</p>
+
+<p>Here I caught sight of my two companions, and was able to fling them a
+few words through the "Yok, yok" of the sentries. They also had been
+separated, and put amongst criminals. Their lot had been no different to
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>"A slight mistake has occurred," said the Prison Commandant to me, "but
+now you shall have one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> the best rooms in the prison. Only I am
+afraid you will be alone there, until after your trial."</p>
+
+<p>Of course I did not believe him, but I was glad that I was to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>I was taken to a room on the upper floor, furnished with a bed and
+blanket, and with a window opening on to a corridor, where people were
+always passing. The Commandant had spoken the truth. It was quite a good
+room, as prison apartments go, and the traffic of the corridor amused
+me.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock that night I was able to get a dish of haricot beans, my
+first meal of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Then I settled down to a month of solitary confinement.</p>
+
+<p>I think I may claim to write of this torture, which exists not only in
+Turkey but through the prisons of the civilised world, with some expert
+knowledge. I use the word "torture" because it is nothing less. Solitary
+confinement is a punishment as barbarous and as senseless as the
+thumbscrew or the rack: more so indeed, for it is better to kill the
+body than to maim the mind. The spirit of man is more than his poor
+flesh; the war has reminded us of that. And if it has also reminded us
+that our prison systems are archaic, so much the better for the world.</p>
+
+<p>At times, in gaol, a tide of pity rose in me for all life created that
+is caged by man.</p>
+
+<p>Take a felon at one end of the scale, and a canary at the other. The
+felon is imprisoned for twenty years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> For twenty years, less some small
+remission for good conduct, an abnormal brain lives in abnormal
+surroundings, where hope dies, and ideals fail. He has sinned against
+society, and therefore society murders his mind. Corporal and capital
+punishment, I have come to believe, are saner than the cruelties,
+immeasurable by "the world's coarse thumb and finger," suffered by the
+mind of man in solitary confinement or the common gaol. The
+sentimentalist who shudders at the cat and gallows forgets the worse,
+slow, hidden horrors that pass unseen in the felon's brain. Perhaps the
+sentimentalist does not realise them. Perhaps also the old lady who
+keeps a canary does not realise the feelings of her pet. She may think
+she is protecting it from the birds and beasts outside. But I feel now
+that I know what the canary feels. . . . However, it is difficult to
+argue about questions involving imagination.</p>
+
+<p>I lived on hope, chiefly, during the days that followed. With nothing to
+read, no cutting instrument of any sort, no washing arrangements, and no
+one to speak to, the time passed hideously. I used to gaze at my watch
+sometimes, appalled at the slow passage of time. The second-hand had a
+horrible fascination for me. It simply crawled round its dial and each
+instant, between the jerks of the little hand, the precious moments of
+my youth were passing, beyond recall. Madness lay that way. If I had
+been a real criminal, I wondered, would I have repented?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> Unquestionably
+the answer was, "No!" Solitary confinement would have made me a
+permanent enemy of society.</p>
+
+<p>There were no smiles and soap in that Military Prison, no scissors, no
+sanitation. There was nothing human or clean about it. Nothing but
+destruction will rid it of its vermin, or scour it of its taint of
+disease and death.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the lack of scissors was the amenity of life whose absence I
+most deplored. Try to do without a cutting instrument for a month, and
+you will realise why it was that some sort of cutting edge was the first
+need of primitive man and remains a prime necessity to-day.</p>
+
+<p>However, as a matter of fact, I did not remain a whole month without a
+cutting edge. Before a fortnight had elapsed I had bettered my position
+in many ways. I had secured a knife (which I stole from the restaurant),
+a wash-basin (sent from the Embassy), and pencil and paper from a
+friendly clerk. With these writing instruments I used to correspond
+voluminously with the other British prisoners, by various privy methods.</p>
+
+<p>I had a regular routine for my days now. Early mornings were devoted to
+walking briskly up and down my room in various gaits&mdash;the sailor's roll,
+for instance, and the Napoleonic stride, and the deportment of various
+of my acquaintances. During this time I avoided thinking, but generally
+imagined some incident in which I took a distinguished part. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+forenoon I played games, such as throwing my soap to the ceiling and
+catching it again, or juggling with cigarettes, both lighted and
+unlighted. The afternoon generally passed in sleep, but the evening and
+nights were bad. It was then that the second hand of my watch began to
+exert its fascination. The electric light bulb, however, could
+occasionally be tampered with, and on these occasions there was always
+the hope that the sentries would get a shock in putting it right. Also I
+found amusement in my watch chain, which I made into an absorbing
+puzzle.</p>
+
+<p>But, curiously enough, I found it impossible to write anything, except
+lengthy letters.</p>
+
+<p>A real prisoner in a well-constituted prison does not enjoy his days any
+more than I did. On the other hand, he knows how long his sentence is
+going to last, whereas in my case I was confined during Djevad Bey's
+pleasure, or the duration of the war, and each day brought me nearer
+nothing&mdash;except insanity.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, however, an Imperial Son-in-law entered my room, and lit my
+life with a certain interest. His father, who was a Court official, had
+betrothed him to a princess, and he had consequently assumed the title
+of Damad, or Son-in-law. This youth had had a remarkable career. While
+still a guileless lad, scarcely broke from the harem, he had used his
+revolver so injudiciously that he had seriously damaged one of the
+Imperial apartments, besides killing the elderly Colonel at whom he was
+aiming.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> Enver Pasha had of course himself a weakness for this sort of
+thing, but still, to save appearances, the Damad had to be punished. He
+was therefore condemned to three months' confinement in the Military
+Prison. Although nominally in residence there, he used, however, to
+leave prison every Friday to attend the Sultan's Selamlik, and only
+return on Monday night. Moreover, he not only thoroughly amused himself
+during his protracted week-ends, he also squeezed every bit of pleasure
+possible out of his prison days. Life was a lemon, which he sucked with
+grace. He was free to wander where he wished in the prison, and to eat
+and drink what he liked. The best of everything was good enough for the
+Damad. Grapes came for him from the Sultan's garden, and a faithful
+negro slave was always at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>The Damad had rather charming manners. He knocked politely before
+entering my cell.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse my interrupting," he said, "but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are not interrupting me at all," I answered, getting up from my
+bed. "I do wish you would stop and talk. Have a cigarette? I haven't
+talked to anyone for a fortnight."</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry, but I daren't talk to you. That is a pleasure to come. I
+wanted to borrow something, that's all. And, I say, will you allow me to
+offer you one of my cigarettes&mdash;they're the Sultan's brand, you know.
+Better take the box. Well, I saw you with an eyeglass through the window
+in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> passage. Will you lend it me to appear at the next Selamlik?"</p>
+
+<p>I was delighted, and said so. To my sorrow, the Damad instantly took his
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Smuggle me in something to read," I said, as he left with profuse
+apologies for his hurry.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and his long left eyelash flickered.</p>
+
+<p>Next day his little nigger boy, when the sentry's back was turned,
+popped about twenty leaflets into my window. I seized them avidly, and
+found that they were the astounding adventures of Nat Pinkerton in
+French. Never have my eyes rested so gleefully on a printed page. I
+consumed them cautiously, else I should have gorged myself with
+excitement at a single sitting. Like an epicure, I made them last, by
+always breaking off at the critical juncture of the great detective's
+affairs. From that moment my life flowed in more agreeable channels.</p>
+
+<p>"Devouring time, blunt though the lion's paws." . . . I suddenly
+understood Shakespeare's meaning afresh. Time had dulled the clawing of
+regret.</p>
+
+<p>I had failed to escape, it is true, but there was always hope. Things
+were getting better. The women had been released. Th&eacute;mistocl&eacute; only
+awaited a formal trial. My own condition had improved. I had been moved
+from my solitary confinement, just when I had secured a Bible, and a
+large tin of Keating's, wherewith to combat the devils of captivity. But
+any change is better than none at all, I thought. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> mortal hunger for
+companionship is strong, and my new room, besides containing an officer,
+also enjoyed an excellent and varied view.</p>
+
+<p>After a few days' experience of my new room-mate, however, who was a
+Bulgarian Bolshevik, I began to pine for solitude again. A more
+unmitigated Tishbite I have never seen, but fortunately he was smaller
+than I. When I found him washing his feet in my basin one night, I smote
+him, hip and thigh.</p>
+
+<p>That Bulgarian has coloured my whole view of the Balkans. The less said
+about him, the better.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One day about thirty British officers arrived from the camp at Yuzgad,
+whence they had escaped and been recaptured on the occasion when
+Commander Cochrane and his gallant band of seven marched four hundred
+and fifty miles to freedom. All the party who arrived in the Military
+Prison were in uniform, and in excellent spirits. They were like a
+breath of fresh air in that sordid place. On being put into three rooms,
+these thirty brave men and true at once demanded beds to sleep on. In
+due time the beds arrived, in the usual condition of beds in that place.
+They might have been so many Stilton cheeses. Our thirty prisoners,
+despite the protest of the guards, carried out their couches into the
+passage, and lit two Primus stoves. Over these stoves they proceeded to
+pass the component parts of each bed, so that its occupants were utterly
+exterminated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Imagine the scene. A dismal corridor, a flaming stove, Turkish sentries
+protesting with Hercules in khaki, cleansing the Augean stable. . . .
+But protests were useless. The smell of burnt bugs mingled with the
+other contaminations of the prison. Our officers had done in little what
+civilisation will one day do at large throughout that land.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A British officer, going to the feeding place, looked into a window
+which gave on to my room. But I was kept strictly apart from my fellows,
+and the sentry consequently tried to drag the officer away.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone, you son of Belial!" said he. "Isn't a window meant to
+look through?"</p>
+
+<p>Windows in that prison were certainly not meant to look through.</p>
+
+<p>From my new eyrie I had a composite view of startling contrasts. Down
+below, some soldiers were living in a verandah, behind wooden bars.
+Anything more animal than their life it would be impossible to conceive.
+Every afternoon at three o'clock a parade of handcuffed men were
+marshalled two by two, and then pushed into these dens. Beyond them lay
+the city of Stamboul with its clustered cupolas and nine-trellised
+alley-ways. And beyond the city were the blue waters of the Marmora.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was the window in the passage through which the British
+officer had observed me. This gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> me a view of the rank and fashion of
+the prison, so that I knew who was being tried, who received visitors,
+and so on.</p>
+
+<p>And directly opposite me, in another face of the building, was yet
+another window, with curtains drawn. That was the window of the Hall of
+Justice. Directly under my perch, but rather too far to jump, were some
+telegraph lines which might possibly have provided a means of escape.
+Sentries used to watch me carefully, whenever I looked at these
+telegraph lines. I was considered a dangerous, indeed a desperate
+character, and my every movement was regarded with apprehension. Not
+only was no one (except now the Bulgarian) allowed to speak to me, but I
+was not even permitted to look at anything, or anyone, for long, without
+being bidden to desist. Whatever I did, in fact, I was told not to do.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually I made a scene.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate cause of the row was that I had a glimpse of a sitting in
+the Hall of Justice. I had often wondered what passed there, for at
+times faint screams used to hint of the infamies that passed behind
+those curtains.</p>
+
+<p>One day I saw.</p>
+
+<p>The Hall of Justice is a fine room, with a lordly sweep of view over the
+city and the sea. Why anyone chose such a situation as a torture chamber
+I do not know. But there it was. There was something dramatic about the
+beautiful prospect and the bestial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> people who sat with their backs
+turned to it, interrogating the Armenians.</p>
+
+<div class="poem2"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Every prospect pleases and only man is vile."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Very vile were the two Turkish officers, judges I suppose, who sat
+smoking cigarettes, while an old Armenian woman and her son stood before
+them to be tried. What passed I could not hear, but evidently her
+answers were not satisfactory, for presently the policeman who stood
+behind her kicked her violently, so that her head jerked back and her
+arms flung forward, and she was sent tottering towards the judges'
+table. Then the policeman took a stick as thick as a man's wrist, and
+began to beat her over the head and shoulders. Her son meanwhile had
+fallen on his knees and was crawling about the room, dragging his
+chains, and supplicating first the judges and then the policeman. He was
+imploring them, no doubt, to have pity on his mother's age and weakness.</p>
+
+<p>She fell down in a faint. The policeman kicked her in the face, and then
+prodded her with a stick until she rose.</p>
+
+<p>I wish the people who are ready to "let the Turk manage his own country"
+could have seen that savage pantomime.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to get out to stop it, but was driven back with bayonets.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Djevad Bey, the Military Commandant of Constantinople, with a
+resplendent retinue, arrived one day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> to inspect us. With his long
+cigarette-holder, and long shiny boots, he swaggered round, followed by
+<i>ormulu</i> staff officers and diligent clerks and pompous gentlemen in
+dog-collars. Everywhere around him was dirt, disease, destitution, and
+despair. But Djevad Bey in his shiny boots "cared for none of these
+things." He was himself, with his medals and moustaches, and that was
+enough.</p>
+
+<p>"What more do you want, <i>effendi</i>?" he asked me after I had made a few
+casual complaints (for it was useless to take him seriously). "You have
+one of the most beautiful views in Europe from the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not allowed into the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Have a little patience, <i>mon cher</i>," said he. "It is rather crowded
+with older prisoners now. But in a little time perhaps, when I have
+discovered the name of that forger . . ."</p>
+
+<p>And with a condescending smile he passed on between ranks of sentries
+standing stiffly at attention, to inspect another portion of his
+miserable menagerie.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Ah, Djevad, <i>mon cher</i>, those days seem distant now! You and your
+popinjays have passed. . . .</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Five shillings.</p></div>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>OUR SECOND ESCAPE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The ghosts of the prisoners of the Tower, or of the Bastille, could they
+revisit earth, would undoubtedly have found themselves more at home in
+the Military Prison, Constantinople, than anywhere else in the world.
+The dark ages were still a matter of actuality in the dark dungeons of
+Constantinople in 1918. To be tried, for instance, was there considered
+something very up-to-date. Most prisoners were not tried, until their
+sentence was nearly over, when they were formally liberated.</p>
+
+<p>After a month of solitary confinement, and a week of confinement with
+the Bulgarian, which was an even worse travail of the spirit, I received
+the joyful news that the preliminaries for my court-martial were almost
+complete.</p>
+
+<p>I attended this first sitting with the thrill of a debutante going to a
+ball. I determined to make up arrears of talk. And I did. I began at the
+beginning of my life, sketched my education, and came by easy stages to
+my career as an officer in the Indian Cavalry. The clerk who recorded my
+evidence wrote for two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> hours without pause or intermission, but it is
+worthy of record that at the end of that time we had only reached the
+point where an officer of the Psamattia fire brigade, hearing, as I
+thought, a suspicious movement on the roof of the house across the
+street, kept a stern and steadfast gaze in our direction, while we
+crouched trembling under cover of the parapet. At this point the
+proceedings were adjourned.</p>
+
+<p>But the Court had let fall a useful piece of information. Robin was back
+in prison, but was being kept even more secret and secluded than I.</p>
+
+<p>However, love laughs at locksmiths, and it takes more than a Turkish
+sentry to defeat a persevering prisoner. We sighted each other in
+passages, we met in wash-places, we flipped notes to each other in bits
+of bread, or sent them by a third party concealed in cigarettes. By such
+means, I learnt Robin's remarkable story. . . . After being caught at
+Malgara, ten days after his first escape, he was taken back to the
+Central Gaol, where he was treated as a Turkish deserter and given
+nothing but black bread to eat. He thereupon went on hunger strike for
+three days, and alarmed the Turks by nearly dying in their hands. Later
+he was allowed to purchase a liberal diet, including even wine and
+cigars, which he declared were necessary to his health, but his
+constitution being enfeebled by privation, he developed alarming
+swellings over his face and scalp, which were probably due to some
+noxious ingredient of the hair-dye he had used. In this condition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> he
+was sent to hospital, and from hospital he escaped again. A Greek
+patient was his accomplice.</p>
+
+<p>Giving this man ten pounds to buy a disguise with, he made an
+appointment with him for nine o'clock outside the German Embassy (!) and
+then set out on his adventures dressed in a white night-shirt. How he
+eluded the sentries is a mystery to me, although I inspected the place
+after the armistice. Patients were then saying (Turks, who are sometimes
+sportsmen, among them): "Here is where a British officer escaped. Thus
+and thus did he climb&mdash;past the sentries&mdash;along that buttress&mdash;down into
+the street hard by the guard-house!". . . . He arrived punctually at
+nine o'clock at the German Embassy, in his night-shirt. But the Greek
+accomplice was not there. He was at that moment drinking and dicing with
+Robin's money. For half an hour Robin waited for him by a tree in the
+shadows of a side street leading to the sea. The few people who passed
+him stared hard, and then moved nervously across to the other pavement.
+They thought he was a madman.</p>
+
+<p>Robin, I think, felt he was a madman too. In his present situation and
+dress, detection was only a matter of time. However, chance might be
+kind and send him a disguise. Cold and disconsolate, he ascended the
+main road that led to the top of the Grand Rue de Pera, and taking his
+way through the traffic, dipped down into the ruins beyond. The saint
+who protects prisoners must have guided that tall white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> figure, that
+paddled across the busy town. . . . And more, once he was hiding in the
+ruins, the saint must have sent along the small boy who passed close to
+him in that lonely spot of cypresses and desolation. All-unknowing of
+the fate that awaited him behind the angle of the wall, the small boy
+strode sturdily along, thinking perhaps of the nice bran-bread and
+synthetic coffee that awaited him for supper. Robin pounced out of the
+shadow, and seized him by the scruff of the neck. . . . The victim
+instantly began to blubber.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me all your clothes," said Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" sobbed the little boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Brigand," said Robin shortly.</p>
+
+<p>This answer had the desired effect. The youth dried his tears, and
+divested himself of his apparel, which Robin immediately put on. The
+boots were much too small to wear and were returned. Still, the brigand
+was so satisfied with his clothes that he gave the small boy four pounds
+with a magnanimous gesture. Then he set out to seek his fortune, wearing
+a tiny fezz, and a coat whose sleeves reached half-way down his forearm.
+For four days he dodged about the city, never more than a few hours at
+one place, until, just when his strength and his funds were exhausted,
+he found a house to give him shelter. From here he made a plan to
+escape, but was recaught through treachery at the docks, and taken back
+to the Military Prison. Only an Ali Baba could do justice to these
+experiences. Alas! the best books<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> of adventure are just those which are
+never written.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway we were together again, two desperadoes in dungeon, "apart but
+not afar."</p>
+
+<p>The Damad's little nigger boy often contributed to our schemes for
+communication. This lad, who was in training for the position of keeper
+of the harem, and consequently belonged to the species that rises to
+eminence in Turkey, was a remarkable child. He did exactly what he liked
+and no one dared interfere with the little Lord Chamberlain <i>in posse</i>.
+He had an uncanny brain and uncanny strength, and I can quite understand
+the reliance which Turkish Pashas are wont to repose in these servants.
+I relied on him myself at times, and was never disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of a neutral Red Cross delegate, at about this time, did
+much to secure us better treatment. For over five weeks now I had not
+breathed fresh air, but directly the Red Cross delegate arrived I was
+allowed to go to the bath, escorted by two dog-collar gentlemen with
+revolvers and two sentries with side arms. While glad to feel I was
+employing so many of the Turkish Army while at my ablutions, I could not
+but deplore their anxiety on my behalf.</p>
+
+<p>"No officer has ever succeeded in escaping from this wonderful gaol of
+yours," I said to the Prison Commandant, who (in contrast to Djevad) was
+quite a good fellow in his way "and I don't suppose anyone ever will.
+Why therefore go to the trouble of guarding us so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> closely? It would be
+a very graceful act on your part if you allowed us to go occasionally
+into the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Yarin, inshallah," murmured the Commandant, meaning, "To-morrow, please
+God."</p>
+
+<p>And to-morrow, strange to say, actually arrived in about a week's time.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps a bomb raid hastened matters, by stimulating the Commandant's
+desire to do graceful acts before the war was over.</p>
+
+<p>One of the bombs of this raid dropped in the school playground just
+outside the Seraskerat Square, and shattered all the windows in my
+passage. Fortunately all the children were away, it being Friday. No one
+was killed by that bomb, but a large handsome Turkish officer prisoner
+standing beside me in the passage, when some panes of glass beside us
+burst, threw himself on the floor and refused to rise again, declaring
+he was killed. A full ten minutes he lay, with his moustaches in the
+dust, surrounded by sentries. In the confusion that ensued Robin
+cleverly slipped over to me and we had a very useful chat.</p>
+
+<p>The first and most vital thing to do, we decided, was to get into
+Constantinople, in order to learn how the situation really stood, and
+make our plans for escaping, so that in the event of our success we
+should be in possession of knowledge useful to the Allies.</p>
+
+<p>Having settled this, we returned to our respective cells, where I
+witnessed a scene that, by contrast with the behaviour of the nervous
+Turkish officer, reminded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> me of the "patient deep disdain" that the
+East will always feel for the marvels of our age of steel. Our machines
+are things of a day, but the ancient needs remain. The bomb that had
+dropped in the playground had wrecked a large tree that stood in its
+centre, and hardly had its smoke cleared away before an elderly peasant
+appeared with a donkey and started collecting twigs and splinters for
+firewood. Slowly and stolidly, under that barrage-riven sky, the old man
+continued gathering the aftermath of the raid, before the raid was
+finished. Empires might crumble to the dust: he would cook his dinner
+with the pieces.</p>
+
+<p>This bombing business "cleared the air" for us greatly, and another
+little incident clinched matters.</p>
+
+<p>An officious sentry, who had received the usual orders about treating
+Robin with especial severity, so far exceeded his instructions as to
+slap Robin in the face when he was merely standing at the door of his
+room. Robin instantly knocked him down with a hook on the point of the
+jaw that would have sent a prizefighter to sleep, let alone a <i>posta</i>.
+There was a click of rifles and a glitter of bayonets. Sergeants were
+whistled for. Swords and spurs rang down the corridor. The Commandant
+arrived.</p>
+
+<p>What seemed an awkward situation for Robin at first now turned greatly
+to his advantage. He demanded an apology from the Minister of War, and
+although he did not receive this, our treatment immediately improved.
+The Turkish sentry was so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> clearly in the wrong that the Commandant felt
+he should do something to placate us.</p>
+
+<p>One day, Robin and I were told that we would be allowed into
+Constantinople to shop, provided we gave our parole not to escape while
+in the town.</p>
+
+<p>This we immediately decided to do, and wrote a promise stating that
+while we could give no permanent engagement about our behaviour while
+guarded in prison, if we were allowed out into the town we bound
+ourselves to return faithfully to our quarters at a fixed time. Next
+day, accordingly, we dressed in the quaint apologies for clothes in our
+possession, and sallied out, blinking in the sunlight of the square.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine our surprise when we found an escort of ten armed men, who were
+to accompany us to see that we kept our word. Highly incensed, we
+returned directly to the Commandant's office, followed by our retinue.
+At first the Commandant did not understand the nature of the insult he
+had offered to us, but eventually he agreed that a squad of soldiers was
+unnecessary to enforce an Englishman's promise, and he promised to send
+us out again on the following day, more suitably attended.</p>
+
+<p>This time there were only two dog-collar gentlemen to accompany us, and
+although we were later joined by a third, who, I think, smelt beer and
+beef in the offing, we considered that this number of attendants was not
+unsuitable to our importance. (For a long time after escape, indeed, I
+was always expecting to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> find a sentry at my elbow. They were very
+convenient for carrying parcels, and during this excursion the minions
+of the law actually carried back to prison our escaping gear, wrapped in
+harmless-looking packages.) Rope, fezzes, and maps were the articles
+chiefly required, and these we purchased without much difficulty in
+restaurants where we were known. Robin and I were adepts at this sort of
+thing by now. One of us had only to go over to our escort's table, and
+standing over them, inquire whether they preferred black beer or yellow:
+meanwhile the other would be "wangling" the waiter. Besides material
+accessories we also required certain moral support. Was it worth while
+to escape? Would the Bulgarians attack Constantinople? What was the
+<i>morale</i> of the Tchatchaldja garrison? . . . . All this and much more we
+learnt from Miss Whitaker, whom we met (just by chance, do you think?)
+at tea at the Petits Champs.</p>
+
+<p>We returned from our excursion highly satisfied with our prospects. That
+evening we thanked the Commandant warmly for our delightful day, and
+asked one favour more, namely that we should be allowed out regularly
+into the garden, in order to get the exercise necessary to our health.
+An hour's walk every day would greatly relieve the tension of captivity.
+Surely, we said, the Commandant did not intend to keep us caged like
+wild beasts, with a minimum of air and exercise?</p>
+
+<p>Permission was granted, with the proviso that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> should not talk to
+other prisoners. Of all black sheep we were the blackest ones.</p>
+
+<p>So we walked in the garden, and discussed plans of escape. We now had
+fezzes, rope, and plenty of money. On the other hand, there were so many
+sentries everywhere, and so many doors and barriers to get through, that
+the thing seemed impossible at first.</p>
+
+<p>Bribery was not to be thought of. Any attempt in this direction would
+have sent us through the portals of the damned again, to await the end
+of the war in chains.</p>
+
+<p>Only in the garden was there the slightest chance of success. Our
+chance, however, lay, as before, in the element of the unexpected.</p>
+
+<p>On the far side of the garden from the prison were some iron railings,
+which overlooked a drop of from one hundred to two hundred feet, to a
+street below. These railings were spaced at just about the width of a
+man's head. We tested them at various points while apparently engaged in
+looking at the view, and made a note of the gaps most suitable to
+squeeze through. No one appeared to think it likely we would try to
+escape over a precipice. The six sentries in the garden therefore, whose
+sole duty it was to watch us, generally devoted their attention to
+seeing we did not talk to the Greek clerks who came into the restaurant
+to get their dinner of an evening. Beyond occasionally saying the magic
+word "<i>Yok</i>," they allowed us to do much what we liked at the other side
+of the garden,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> where our interests, they thought, could only be of an
+innocent nature.</p>
+
+<p>At first our idea was to get through the railings and slide down a rope
+into the street, but there were practical difficulties about this.
+Thirty fathoms of rope are impossible to conceal on one's person.
+Besides, we thought of a better plan.</p>
+
+<p>Having got through the railings, we would climb along outside them, past
+the garden, and along the wall of a printing-house, where their support
+still continued, until we reached the main square of the Seraskerat.
+Here we would squeeze back through the railings (for the drop was still
+too difficult to negotiate) and proceed as follows: We would stroll to
+the centre of the square, light cigars, and then suddenly altering our
+demeanour, hurry back to the staff garage where the military motor-cars
+were kept. The sentry on guard would certainly think we were chauffeurs.</p>
+
+<p>With a guttural curse or two, we would start up a car, and drive
+directly to the Bulgarian frontier, or Dedeagatch, as the situation
+dictated. If anyone attempted to stop us on the way, we had only to say,
+"<i>Kreuzhimmel donnerwetter</i>," and open out the throttle. The plan was
+charming in its simplicity and <i>kolossal</i> in conception. We already
+imagined ourselves arriving with full details of the Constantinople
+defences, in a big Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s car. The plan was complete. We had only to
+do it!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Opportunity came one twilight evening, when we two were alone in the
+garden, with the six sentries, all rather sleepy, and the Damad, who had
+just returned from a hectic week-end up the Bosphorus. He was full of
+stories and news which we did not want to hear. For a time he bored us
+to tears talking of the war, but at last conversation flagged, and we
+bade him a cordial good-night, making an appointment to see him again
+next day, which we trusted we would not be in a position to keep.</p>
+
+<p>Then we edged to the far side of the garden, where the railings were.
+The six sleepy sentries were watching the stream of people going into
+the restaurant near the entrance gate. They paid no attention to us, and
+looked&mdash;rather sadly, I thought&mdash;at the Greeks who were coming in to
+have a square meal, a thing that they themselves could only dream of.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling that the moment was too good to be lost, and yet somehow too
+good to be true, we stood by the railings, with our heads half through.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," said Robin cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>I put my head through, and my flinching flesh followed a moment later. I
+hung over the drop and looked and listened tensely for any stir in the
+garden, expecting every moment to hear the clamour of sentries and the
+drone of bullets. But all was quiet. One sentry lit another's cigarette.
+A third was playing with a kitten. The others had their backs turned.</p>
+
+<p>We clambered along, and reached the printing-house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> We were out of
+sight of the sentries now, and the way seemed clear, across a patch of
+ivy, to a gap which would give us entrance to the main square. Once we
+had gained its comparative freedom, success, I felt, was certain.</p>
+
+<p>But my hope was short-lived. The railings on the wall of the
+printing-house led past an open window, which we had not been able to
+see from the garden. At this window three Turks were sitting. They were
+officials of the printing-house no doubt, and were now engaged in
+discussing short drinks and the prospect of the Bosphorus. Had we
+interposed our bodies between them and the view, we would have been in a
+very unpleasant position. With one finger they could have pushed us down
+to the street a hundred feet below, or else detained us where we were,
+to wait like wingless flies until soldiers came to drag us back.</p>
+
+<p>It was a horrid anti-climax, but we decided to go back. There was no
+alternative.</p>
+
+<p>That return journey was quite hideous, for at any moment before we
+reached our gap a sentry might have seen us. And even if they had missed
+us at fifty yards (and we were a sitting shot against the sunset) we
+would have looked absolutely foolish and been abjectly helpless.</p>
+
+<p>All went well, however. We squeezed back through the railings, and found
+ourselves in the prison garden again. Our attempt had failed. I felt as
+if someone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> had suddenly flattened me out with a rolling pin. But Robin
+was quite undismayed.</p>
+
+<p>"Our luck is in," he said&mdash;"else we would have been spotted against
+those railings just now. Look, it is a full moon, like the last time we
+escaped. I bet we succeed to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't take your money," I said, hugely heartened, however.</p>
+
+<p>Four of our sentries were smoking sadly, and looking into the
+restaurant, as boys look into a cake-shop. The fifth was standing by the
+gold-fish pond. The sixth leaned against the railings, about eighty
+yards away from us, looking out towards Galata Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>After hurriedly dusting ourselves, we walked straight past him. He
+turned and glanced at his watch, and then at us.</p>
+
+<p>"Just five minutes more," we urged&mdash;"we haven't had nearly enough
+exercise yet."</p>
+
+<p>And we continued walking round the garden, breathlessly discussing
+plans.</p>
+
+<p>The sentry nodded and sighed, then turned again to contemplate the
+Golden Horn.</p>
+
+<p>Our one remaining chance was to walk straight out of the gate near the
+restaurant, into the main square. In moments of intense stress one can
+sometimes grasp the psychology of a situation in a flash. We saw into
+the minds of the sentries, I believe. They were bored and unsuspecting.
+A sort of prevision came to us that we would be mistaken for Greek
+employees of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> Ministry, and could stroll unquestioned through the
+gate, if we acted instantly.</p>
+
+<p>It was getting dark now. We slipped into a patch of shadow, threw away
+our hats, and taking out the fezzes which we always carried concealed
+under our waistcoats, we put them on our heads. Then we strolled on.</p>
+
+<p>To understand our feelings, it must be remembered that no officer has
+ever before succeeded in escaping from this ancient prison. The Turks
+prided themselves on the fact. Recently, a political suspect had made a
+desperate dash for liberty by the same entrance as we now approached,
+but he had been caught before he reached the outer square. Good men had
+tried&mdash;but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And we <i>knew</i>, by
+sheer faith, that we would not be stopped.</p>
+
+<p>We walked very slowly now, stopping sometimes to gesticulate, after the
+manner of the Mediterranean peoples. What we said I have no idea, but I
+think I spoke <i>staccato</i> Italian, while Robin answered in Arabic
+imprecations. Near the gate I remember saying to him passionately in
+English: "For God's sake turn your trousers down," for to one's
+sensitive mind such an oddity of dress was certain to spell detection.
+This was idiotic, but my nerves were on edge.</p>
+
+<p>Mingling with the Greeks who were coming out of the restaurant, we came
+at a very, very leisurely pace to the sentry-guarded gate. Everyone has
+a pass of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> course, both to enter and to leave this gate, but season
+ticket holders, so to speak, are rarely asked to produce their
+credentials.</p>
+
+<a name="SERASKERAT_SQUARE" id="SERASKERAT_SQUARE"></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/213.jpg" width="400" height="430" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h3>THE SQUARE OF THE SERASKERAT, CONSTANTINOPLE</h3>
+
+<p>We came level with the sentries at the gate. One of them took a step
+forward, as if to ask Robin a question. Then he looked at us again, and
+changed his mind. I have a sort of idea that my white waistcoat and
+ornamental watch chain saved the situation. No one with such belongings
+could fail to be a personage of clerkly habit.</p>
+
+<p>In that instant, however, faith had almost faltered, and the temptation
+to quicken one's pace had been almost irresistible. To bolt into the
+comparative freedom of the main square was now quite feasible, but we
+had to remember that once there, our difficulties were only half over.
+Every gate was guarded: the same high railings as we had already
+negotiated formed its perimeter, and there was a battalion of soldiers
+in the square itself. Therefore until we were out of the Seraskerat, we
+had to proceed with caution.</p>
+
+<p>Lethargically and nonchalantly we drew away from the restaurant.
+Although time was now a factor of importance (for at any moment the
+sentries in the garden might miss us), we dared not hurry our steps.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no cars about. Are we going into the garage?" I murmured
+doubtfully to Robin.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment an individual came up behind us, who settled the question
+out of hand. He was a Turkish officer. After passing us, he turned round
+to stare.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> We returned his scrutiny with careful composure, but it was
+quite obvious that he did not like the look of us. Yet our appearance
+was none of his business: he hesitated a moment and then decided to do
+exactly what one might do oneself if one saw a suspicious-looking
+individual in a public place: he went and told a policeman. We saw him
+hurrying to the main gate, where he called out the sergeant of the
+guard. We, meanwhile, were slinking diagonally across the square, as if
+bound for the side gate. To go to the garage now, as if approaching it
+from the Ministry of War, was impossible, as we were being watched. We
+whispered together, making new plans.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost past twilight, but the electric light over the main gate
+showed us the Turkish officer in confabulation with the sergeant of the
+guard. No doubt he was saying that our passports should be scrutinised
+before we were allowed to pass. The sergeant saluted as the officer
+left, and then stood in the circle of light, a burly and menacing
+figure, peering into the gathering darkness.</p>
+
+<p>We had now reached the middle of the Seraskerat and saw that the side
+gate was shut, and sentry-guarded. There was also a sentry in the
+adjacent shed. The main gate was impossible of access. So also was the
+garage. Our only chance lay in going forward.</p>
+
+<p>We went on, past the shed, until we reached some small trees by the side
+of the outer railings. We tried to put our heads through, but owing to a
+slight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> difference of spacing, we found this could not be done. We would
+have to climb over them.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of people were crossing the square. The sergeant stood blinking
+at the entrance. Else all was quiet.</p>
+
+<p>The railings were only some twelve foot high, so they did not form a
+serious obstacle, but on their other side there was a drop of ten feet,
+into a crowded street. That someone would raise an alarm seemed very
+probable.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the railings I looked back to the prison where I had
+passed the last two months, and then forward to the street.</p>
+
+<p>Two little girls stood hand in hand, gaping up at me. A street hawker
+glanced in my direction. Except for these, no passer-by appeared to
+notice us.</p>
+
+<p>I dropped in a heap on the pavement. Next moment Robin landed beside me.</p>
+
+<p>We were free once more, this time not to be recaught.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The two little girls clapped their hands with glee when they saw us
+drop. As to the street hawker, I daresay he thought we were robbers, and
+as such, people not to be interfered with. The other passers-by merely
+edged away from us. No one, in Constantinople, will involve himself in
+any civil commotion if he can avoid it. Whether the disturbance be a
+fire or theft, the procedure is the same. If your neighbour is being
+robbed, you look the other way. If your house is being burnt, you bribe
+the fire brigade not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> to come near it, for it they do, they will
+assuredly loot everything that the flames do not consume. Hence the
+sight of two wild men dropping into a crowded street stirred no civic
+conscience. No one asked who we were.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the tramway lines unmolested, and dived into a narrow street
+leading down the hill. Then we ran and ran and ran.</p>
+
+<p>That our escape would be instantly reported we did not doubt. That
+Galata Bridge would be watched and all our old haunts also seemed
+certain. The care with which we had been guarded showed that the Turks
+set a value on keeping us out of harm's way. At large in the city we
+would be factors of unrest.</p>
+
+<p>Avoiding main streets, we toiled on and on, through dark by-ways where
+the moonlight did not come, until we reached the old bridge across the
+Golden Horn. Here we decided to separate for the time, so that if one of
+us was caught by the toll-keepers, the other could still make good his
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>But the toll-keepers took their tribute of a stamp without demur. They
+knew nothing of British prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing, we turned right-handed, passing behind the American
+Ambassador's yacht <i>Scorpion</i>, at her berth near the Turkish Admiralty,
+and then went up into the European quarter. In Pera we knew a score of
+houses, between us, that would be glad to give us lodging, and it only
+remained to choose the most convenient.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is late at night, some days before the Armistice. I am in the gardens
+of the British Embassy, with a certain Colonel, an escaped prisoner of
+war like myself, who is in close touch with the political situation. We
+had come here, in disguise, to be out of the turmoil of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in the unquiet streets, men talk of revolution. Gangs of
+soldiers are under arms for twenty-four hours at a stretch. Machine guns
+are posted everywhere. The docks are an armed camp. Detectives and
+informers, the prison and the press-gang are at their old work. All is
+still dark in Constantinople; but we, fugitives at present, and meeting
+by stealth, speak of the day so soon to come when the barren flagstaff
+on the roof of the Embassy will carry the Union Jack.</p>
+
+<p>Below us, as we walk on the terrace, lies the Golden Horn, silver in the
+starlight, and across its waters the city of Stamboul stands dim,
+forlorn, and lovely. The slip of moon that rides over San Sofia seems
+symbol of the waning of misery and intolerance. Soon that sickle will
+disappear, and when the moon of the Moslems rises again and looks
+through the garden where we talk, she will see all round it a happier
+city. . . . Let us hope so, anyway.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of the maze of plot and counterplot in the city, of the death-throes of
+the old r&eacute;gime, and of our own small part in the history of that time,
+this record of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> moods and misadventures is not the place to write. My
+life as a prisoner was finished: my brief career as a minor diplomat,
+keeping his finger on the feverish pulse of Turkish politics, had only
+just begun, and the story of those crowded weeks would fill a volume.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the last moment, the Government, in the person of Taalat Pasha,
+hoped to hold the real, if not the ostensible, reins of power. Until the
+flight of the Union and Progress triumvirate, the average Turk affected
+a certain lightheartedness about his country's losses. True, huge
+territories were lost to the Ottoman revenue, but on the other hand they
+had gained the Caucasus. So long as there was taxable territory, what
+did it matter whence the tribute came?</p>
+
+<p>One night, when my newspaper work permitted, I visited a friend of
+Taalat Pasha, without disclosing my identity.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody but Taalat can possibly manage Turkey," he told me&mdash;"and the
+English, if they come, will be well advised to deal with him."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not the English only," I suggested modestly, "but the whole
+world-set-free, that is coming to Constantinople."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the world must deal with Taalat. His party has all the money, and
+all the brains and energy as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything except imagination," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>But I did not myself imagine that only thirty-six hours later Taalat,
+the fat telegraphist whom Fate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> caught in her toils, and Enver, with his
+peacock-grace and peacock-wits, and Djemal, with cruelty stamped on him
+like the brand of Cain, would pass disguised, and in darkness, and in
+fear of death, through the city they had ruled as kings.</p>
+
+<p>Neither did I imagine that in another fortnight the streets of Pera
+would be decked with banners, and the capital of the Turks a playground
+for the peoples against whom they had lately been at war. Nor did I know
+that I should soon be listening to the strains of "Rule Britannia," at
+the Pera Palace Hotel, while an enthusiastic crowd showered confetti on
+the bald head of the Colonel who had just arrived as the first British
+representative. Nor did I know that I should telephone to the papers to
+stop their press, while I motored down with the first interview from our
+delegate. Nor, again, could I realise that the pomp of the Prussians
+would be so suddenly replaced by pipes and walking-sticks and dogs. Nor
+did I even dream that the fifty-sixty horse-power Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s car in which
+General Liman von Sanders was still racing through the streets would
+soon be my property, bought and paid for in gold, complete with all
+accessories, including even the chauffeur's diary, and that I should
+garage it in a garden where a performing bear stood guard against any
+attempt at theft by the disorderly and demoralised Germans. These things
+are another story.</p>
+
+<h5>BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND</h5>
+
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[1]</a></span>
+<p>Telegrams: "Scholarly, London." &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;41 and 43 Maddox Street,<br />
+Telephone: 1883 Mayfair. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Bond Street, London, W. 1.<br />
+ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <i>October, 1919.</i></p>
+
+<h1>Mr. Edward Arnold's</h1>
+
+<h1>AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS, 1919.</h1>
+
+
+<h2>JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS.</h2>
+
+<h3>By STEPHEN GWYNN.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>With Portrait. &nbsp; &nbsp; 1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>16s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The "History of John Redmond's Last Years," by Stephen Gwynn, is in the
+first place an historical document of unusual importance. It is an
+account of Irish political events at their most exciting period, written
+by an active member of Mr. Redmond's party who was in the confidence of
+his chief. The preliminary story of the struggle with the House of Lords
+and the prolonged fight over Home Rule is described by a keen student of
+parliamentary action. For the period which began with the war Mr. Gwynn
+has had access to all Redmond's papers. He writes of Redmond's effort to
+lead Ireland into the war from the standpoint of a soldier as well as a
+member of parliament. The last chapter gives to the world, for the first
+time, a full account of the Irish Convention which sat for eight months
+behind closed doors, and in which Redmond's career reached its dramatic
+catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>The interlocking of varying chains of circumstance, the parliamentary
+struggle, the rise of the rival volunteer forces, the raising of Irish
+divisions, the rebellion and its sequel, and, finally, the effect of
+bringing Irishmen together into conference&mdash;all this is vividly
+pictured, with increasing detail as the book proceeds. In the opening,
+two short chapters recall the earlier history of the Irish party and
+Redmond's part in it.</p>
+
+<p>But the main interest centres in the character of Redmond himself. Mr.
+Gwynn does not work to display his leader as a hero without faults and
+incapable of mistakes. He shows the man as he knew him and worked under
+him, traces his career through its triumphs to reverses, and through
+gallant recovery to final defeat. A great man is made familiar to the
+reader, in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[2]</a></span> wisdom, his magnanimity, and his love of country. The
+tragic waste of great opportunities is portrayed in a story which has
+the quality of drama in it. Beside the picture of John Redmond himself
+there is sketched the gallant and sympathetic figure of his brother,
+who, after thirty-five years of parliamentary service, died with the
+foremost wave of his battalion at the battle of Messines.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>A MEDLEY OF MEMORIES.</h2>
+
+<h3>By the <span class="smcap">Rt. Rev. Sir</span> DAVID HUNTER BLAIR, <span class="smcap">Bart.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>With Illustrations. &nbsp; &nbsp; 1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>16s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>Sir David Hunter Blair, late Abbot of Fort Augustus, in the first part
+of these fifty years' recollections, deals with his childhood and youth
+in Scotland, and gives a picture full of varied interest of Scottish
+country house life a generation or more ago. Very vivid, too, is the
+account of early days at what was then the most famous private school in
+England; and the chapter on Eton under Balston and Hornby gives
+thumbnail sketches of a great many Etonians, school-contemporaries of
+the writer's, and bearing names afterwards very well known for one
+reason or another. Eton was followed by Magdalen; and undergraduate life
+in the Oxford of 1872 is depicted with a light hand and many amusing
+touches. There was foreign travel after the Oxford days; and two of the
+most pleasantly descriptive chapters of the book deal with Rome in the
+reign of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., both of which Pontiffs the author
+served as Private Chamberlain. There is much also that is fresh and
+interesting in the section treating of the lives and personalities of
+some of the great English Catholic families of by-gone days.</p>
+
+<p>Sir David entered the Benedictine Order at the age of twenty-five; and
+the latter half of the book is concerned with his life as co-founder,
+and member of the community of, the great Highland Abbey of Fort
+Augustus, of which he rose later to be the second abbot. The intimate
+account given in these pages of the life of a modern monk will be new to
+most readers, who will find it very interesting reading. The writer's
+monastic experiences embrace not only his own beautiful home in the
+Central Highlands, but Benedictine life and work in England, in Belgium,
+Germany and Portugal, and in South America. One of the most novel and
+attractive chapters in the book is that dealing with the work of the
+Order in the vast territory of Brazil.</p>
+
+<p>The volume is illustrated with an excellent portrait, and with some
+clever black-and-white drawings, the work of Mr. Richard Anson, one of
+the author's religious brethren, and a member of the Benedictine
+community at Caldey Abbey, in South Wales.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>WITH THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Major</span> M. H. DONOHOE,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Army Intelligence Corps.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Special Correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle."</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>With numerous Illustrations and Map. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>16s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>Among the many "side-shows" of the Great War, few are so difficult for
+the average reader to understand as the operations in Northern Persia,
+an offshoot of the Bagdhad venture, which had for their object the
+policing of the warlike tribes in an area almost unknown to Europeans,
+and included the various attempts to reach and hold Baku, and so get
+command of the Caspian and Caucasia.</p>
+
+<p>The story of these operations&mdash;carried out by little, half-forgotten
+bodies of troops, mainly local levies who broke at the critical moment
+and left their British officers and N.C.O.'s to carry on alone&mdash;is one
+of the most amazing of the whole War, and comprises many episodes that
+recall the most stirring events of the Empire's pioneering days.</p>
+
+<p>By happy chance, Major M. H. Donohoe, the famous War Correspondent,
+whose work for the <i>Daily Chronicle</i> in all the wars of the past twenty
+years is well known, was in this part of the world as a Major on the
+Intelligence Staff, work for which his knowledge of men and languages
+off the beaten tract peculiarly fitted him. He has written the story of
+these operations as he saw them, chiefly as a member of the Staff of the
+Military Mission under General Byron, known officially as the "Baghdad
+Party," and unofficially as the "Hush-Hush Brigade," which set forth
+early in 1918 to join the Column under General Dunsterville. Though
+there is little of fighting in the story, the book gives an admirable
+picture of the Empire's work done faithfully under difficulties, and
+glimpses of places and peoples that are almost unknown even to the most
+venturesome traveller. Indeed, it is largely as a book about an unknown
+land that this volume will attract, together with its little
+pen-portraits of men and little pen-pictures of adventures, that Kipling
+would love.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>A PHYSICIAN IN FRANCE.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Major-General Sir</span> WILMOT HERRINGHAM, K.C.M.G., C.B.,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; Consulting Physician to the
+Forces Overseas.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>15s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>How the war, as seen at close quarters, struck a man eminent in another
+profession than that of arms is the distinguishing feature of this
+volume of personal impressions. It is not, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[4]</a></span> merely the outcome
+of a few weeks' sojourn or "trip to the trenches," with one eye on an
+expectant public, for the author has four times seen autumn fade into
+winter on the flat countryside of Flanders, and, when the war ended, was
+still at his post rendering invaluable services amidst unforgettable
+scenes. The author's comments on the day-to-day happenings are
+distinguished by a tone that is at once manly, reflective, and
+good-humoured. Medical questions are naturally prominent, but are dealt
+with largely in a manner that should interest the layman at the present
+time. Sir Wilmot was with Lord Roberts when he died. A very pleasing
+feature of the book is the constant revelation of the author's love of
+nature and sport, and his happy way of introducing such topics, together
+with descriptions of the country around him, makes a welcome contrast to
+the stern events which form the staple material of the book. There are
+some very amusing stories.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>LONDON MEN IN PALESTINE.</h2>
+
+<h3>By ROWLANDS COLDICOTT.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>With maps. &nbsp; &nbsp; 1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>12s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>This book embraces so much more than the ordinary war story that we have
+a peculiar difficulty in describing it in a few chosen words.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain lifts the day after the battle of Sheria, one of the minor
+fights in General Allenby's first campaign&mdash;those movements of troops
+which came only to a pause with the capture of Jerusalem. Gaza has just
+been taken. You are introduced to one of the companies of a London
+battalion serving in the East, of which company the author is commander.
+The reading of a few lines, the passing of a few moments, causes you
+(such is the power of right words) to be <i>attached</i> to that company and
+to move in imagination with it across the dazzling plain. When you have
+tramped a few miles you begin to realise, perhaps for the first time,
+the heat and torment of a day's march in Philistia. It is not long
+before you feel that you, too, are adventuring with the toiling
+soldiers; with them you wonder where the halting place will be, what
+sort of bivouac you are likely to hit upon. By this time you will have
+met the officers&mdash;Temple, Trobus, Jackson&mdash;and are coming to have a
+nodding acquaintance with the men. Desire to compass the unknown, and
+sympathetic interest in the experiences of a company of your own
+country-men, Londoners footing it in a foreign land, now takes you
+irresistibly into the very heart of the tale, and you become one with
+the narrator. With him you wander among the ruins of Gaza, pass into
+southern Palestine, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[5]</a></span> come to the foot-hills of Judea. With him you
+slowly become conscious that the long series of marches is planned to
+culminate in an assault upon Jerusalem. Now you are part of a dusty
+column winding up into Judea by the Jerusalem road, looking hour by hour
+upon those natural phenomena that suggested the parables. "London Men in
+Palestine" brings all this home to you as if you were a passer-by. Next,
+the massing of troops about the Holy City is described, and you are
+given a distant view of the city itself. A chapter follows that
+describes the coming of the rains. Then you spend a night in an old
+rock-engendered fortress-village while troops pass through to the
+attack, the storm still at its height. A chapter follows that tells of a
+crowded day&mdash;too complex and full of incident here to be described. The
+book closes with an exciting description of a fight on the Mount of
+Olives.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>MONS, ANZAC, AND KUT.</h2>
+
+<h3>By an M.P.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>14s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The writer of these remarkable memoirs, whose anonymity will not veil
+his identity from his friends, is a man well known, not only in England,
+but also abroad, and the pages are full of the writer's charm, and
+gaiety of spirit, and "courage of a day that knows not death." Day by
+day, in the thick of the most stirring events in history, he jotted down
+his impressions at first hand, and although parts of the diary cannot
+yet be published, enough is given to the world to form a graphic and
+very human history.</p>
+
+<p>Our author was present at the most critical part of the Retreat from
+Mons. He took part in the dramatic defence of Landrecies, and the stand
+at Compiegne. Wounded, and a prisoner, he describes his experiences in a
+German hospital and his subsequent recapture by the British during the
+Marne advance.</p>
+
+<p>The scene then shifts to Gallipoli, where he was present at the immortal
+first landing, surely one of the noblest pages of our history. He took
+part in the fierce fighting at Suvla Bay, and, owing to his knowledge of
+Turkish, he had amazing experiences during the Armistice arranged for
+the burial of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Later, the author was in Mesopotamia, where he accompanied the relieving
+force in their heroic attempt to save Kut. On several occasions he was
+sent out between the lines to conduct negociations between the Turks and
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Mons, Anzac, and Kut" . . . A day and a day will pass, before the man
+and the moment meet to give us another book like this. We congratulate
+ourselves that the author survived to write it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>THE STRUGGLE IN THE AIR.</h2>
+<h3>1914-1918.</h3>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Major</span> CHARLES C. TURNER (late R.A.F.).</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Assoc. Fellow R. Aer. Soc., Cantor Lectures on Aeronautics, 1909. Author
+of "Aircraft of To-day," "The Romance of Aeronautics," and (with Gustav
+Hamel) of "Flying: Some Practical Experiences," Editor of "Aeronautics,"
+etc., etc., etc.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>With Illustrations. &nbsp; &nbsp; 1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>15s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>Major Turner served in the flying arm throughout the great conflict,
+chiefly as an instructor of officers of the Royal Naval Air Service, and
+then of the Royal Air Force in the principles of flight, aerial
+navigation, and other subjects. He did much experimental work, made one
+visit to the Front, and was mentioned in dispatches. The Armistice found
+him in the position of Chief Instructor at No. 2 School of Aeronautics,
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>The classification of this book explains its scope and arrangement. The
+chapters are as follows:</p>
+
+<p>Capabilities of Aircraft; Theory in 1914; The flight to France and
+Baptism of Fire; Early Surprises; Fighting in the Air, 1914-1915; 1916;
+1917; 1918; Zeppelins and the Defence; Night Flying; The Zeppelin
+Beaten; Aeroplane Raids on England; Bombing the Germans; Artillery
+Observation; Reconnaissance and Photography; Observation Balloons;
+Aircraft and Infantry; Sea Aircraft; Heroic Experimenters; Casualties in
+the Third Arm; The Robinson Quality.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>CAUGHT BY THE TURKS.</h2>
+
+<h3>By FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>This book contains a full measure of adventure and excitement. The
+author, who is a Captain in the Indian Cavalry, was serving in the Air
+Force in Mesopotamia in 1915, and was captured through an accident to
+the aeroplane while engaged in a hazardous and successful attempt to cut
+the Turkish telegraph lines north and west of Baghdad, just before the
+Battle of Ctesiphon. Then came the horrors of the journey to
+Constantinople, during which the "terrible Turk" showed himself in his
+worst colours; but it was in Constantinople that the most thrilling
+episodes of his captivity had their origin. The story of the Author's
+first attempt to escape (which did not succeed) and of his subsequent
+lucky dash for freedom, is one of intense interest, and is told in a
+most vivid and dramatic way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>JOHN HUGH ALLEN</h2>
+<h3>OF THE GALLANT COMPANY</h3>
+
+<h3>A Memoir by his Sister INA MONTGOMERY.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>With Portrait. &nbsp; &nbsp; 1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>This book is the life-story of a young New Zealander who was killed in
+action at the Dardanelles in June, 1915. It is told mainly in his own
+letters and diaries&mdash;which have been supplemented, so far as was
+needful, with the utmost tact and discretion by his sister&mdash;and falls
+naturally into three principal stages. Allen spent four very strenuous
+years, 1907-1911, at Cambridge, where he occupied a prominent position
+among his contemporaries as an active member, and eventually President
+of the Union. Though undergraduate politics are not usually taken very
+seriously by the outside world, yet this side of Allen's Cambridge
+career has an interest far transcending the merely personal one.
+Possessed, as he was, of remarkable gifts, which he had cultivated by
+assiduous practice as a speaker and writer, and passionately interested
+in all that concerns the British Empire, and the present and future
+relations between the United Kingdom and the Overseas Dominions, his
+record may well stand as representative of the attitude of the <i>&eacute;lite</i>
+of the New Zealand youth towards these vital matters in the period just
+preceding the war.</p>
+
+<p>After Cambridge, he returned for a time to New Zealand, where he
+resolved to make his permanent home, but came back to England in
+December, 1913, to complete his legal studies and get called to the bar,
+and was still in England when the war broke out. Consequently the second
+stage is the story of seven months' experience as a lieutenant in the
+13th Battalion of the Worcesters, and his letters of this period give an
+attractive, and intensely graphic account of the making of the new army.
+Finally, he was despatched, with a few other selected officers, to the
+Dardanelles, arrived on May 25th at Cape Helles, and was attached to the
+Essex regiment. The last stage, brief, glorious, and terrible, lasted
+only twelve days but, brief as it was, he had time to draw an
+enthralling picture of the unexampled horrors of this particular phase
+of trench-warfare. The book is steeped, from beginning to end, in a
+sober but fervent enthusiasm; and the cult of the Empire, in its noblest
+form, has seldom been as finely exemplified as by the life and death of
+John Allen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>NO&Euml;L ROSS AND HIS WORK.</h2>
+
+<h3>Edited by HIS PARENTS.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>A series of charming sketches by a young New Zealander, who died in
+December, 1917, on the threshold of a brilliant literary career. No&euml;l
+Ross was one of those daring Anzacs who made the landing on Gallipoli.
+Wounded in the early days of the terrible fighting there, he was
+discharged from the Army, came to London, rejoined there, and obtained a
+commission in the Royal Field Artillery. Afterwards he became a valued
+member of the Editorial Staff of <i>The Times</i>, on which his genius was at
+once recognized and highly appreciated. Much of his work appeared in
+<i>The Times</i>, and he was also a contributor to <i>Punch</i>. In collaboration
+with his father, Captain Malcolm Ross, the New Zealand War
+Correspondent, he was the author of "Light and Shade in War," of which
+the <i>Daily Mail</i> said: "It is full of Anzac virility, full of Anzac
+buoyancy, and surcharged with that devil-may-care humour that has so
+astounded us jaded peoples of an older world."</p>
+
+<p>His writings attracted the attention of such capable writers as Rudyard
+Kipling, and Sir Ian Hamilton, who said he reminded him in many ways of
+that gallant and brilliant young Englishman, Rupert Brooke.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>WITH THE BRITISH INTERNED IN SWITZERLAND.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Lieut.-Colonel</span> H. P. PICOT, C.B.E.,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Late Military Attach&eacute;, 1914-16, and British Officer in Charge of the
+Interned, 1916-18.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Demy 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>In this volume Colonel Picot tells us, in simple and lucid fashion, how
+some thousands of our much tried and suffering countrymen were
+transferred&mdash;to the eternal credit of Switzerland&mdash;from the harsh
+conditions of captivity to a neutral soil, there to live in comparative
+freedom amid friendly surroundings. He describes in some detail the
+initiative taken by the Swiss Government on behalf of the Prisoners of
+War in general, and the negociations which preceded the acceptance by
+the Belligerent States of the principle of Internment, and then recounts
+the measures taken by that Government for the hospitalization of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[9]</a></span> some
+30,000 Prisoners of War, and the organization of a Medical Service for
+the treatment of the sick and wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Turning, then, more particularly to the group of British prisoners, he
+deals with their discipline, their camp life, the steps taken for
+spiritual welfare, and the organization of sports and recreations, and
+an interesting chapter records the efforts made to afford them technical
+training in view of their return to civil life.</p>
+
+<p>The book also comprises a resum&eacute; of the formation and development of the
+Bread Bureau at Berne, which ultimately, in providing bread for 100,000
+British prisoners of war in Germany, doubtless saved countless lives;
+and a description of the activities of the British Legation Red Cross
+Organization, both of which institutions were founded by Lady Grant
+Duff, wife of H.M.'s Minister at Berne.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Picot throws many interesting sidelights on life in Switzerland
+in war-time&mdash;diplomatic, social, and artistic&mdash;and his modest and
+self-effacing narrative dwells generously on the devotion of all those
+who, whether by appointment or chance, were associated with him in his
+beneficent labours.</p>
+
+<p>It is hoped that this account of a special phase in the history of our
+countrymen will prove of interest to that large public who have shown in
+countless ways their sympathy with all that concerns the welfare of
+Prisoners of War.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY EIGHTY YEARS AGO.</h2>
+
+<h3>By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Author of "Tante," "The Encounter," etc.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Demy 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>With exquisite literary art which the reading public has recognised in
+"Tante" and others of her novels, the author of this book tells of a
+great lady's childhood in picturesque Brittany in the middle of the last
+century. It covers that period of life around which the tenderest and
+most vivid memories cluster; a childhood set in a district of France
+rich in romance, and rich in old loyalties to manners and customs of a
+gracious era that is irrevocably in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Charming vignettes of character, marvellous descriptions of houses,
+costumes and scenery, short stories in silhouette of pathetic or
+humorous characters&mdash;these are also in the book.</p>
+
+<p>And through it all the author is seen re-creating a background, which
+has profoundly influenced one of the finest literary artists of the last
+century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>GARDENS: THEIR FORM AND DESIGN.</h2>
+
+<h3>By the <span class="smcap">Viscountess</span> WOLSELEY.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>With numerous Illustrations by</i> <span class="smcap">Miss M. G. CAMPION</span>.</h4>
+
+<h4><i>1 vol. &nbsp; &nbsp; Medium 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>21s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The present volume, which is beautifully got up and illustrated, deals
+with form and line in the garden, a subject comparatively new in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Wolseley's book suggests simple, inexpensive means&mdash;the outcome of
+practical knowledge and experience&mdash;for achieving charming results in
+gardens of all sizes. Her College of Gardening at Glynde has shown Lady
+Wolseley how best to make clear to those who have never before thought
+about garden design, some of the complex subjects embraced by it, such
+as Water Gardens, Rock Gardens, Treillage, Paved Gardens, Surprise
+Gardens, etc. The book contains many decorative and imaginative drawings
+by Miss Mary G. Campion, as well as a large number of practical diagrams
+and plans, which further illustrate the author's ideas and add to the
+value of the book.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS.</h2>
+
+<h4>SIXTH SERIES.</h4>
+
+<h3>By the <span class="smcap">Rt. Hon. Sir</span> HERBERT MAXWELL, <span class="smcap">Bt.</span>,
+F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>With photogravure frontispiece. &nbsp; &nbsp; Large Crown 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>It is some years since the fifth series of "Memories of the Months" was
+issued, but the demand for Sir Herbert Maxwell's charming volumes
+continues unabated. Every year rings new changes on the old order of
+Nature, and the observant eye can always find fresh features on the face
+of the Seasons. Sir Herbert Maxwell goes out to meet Nature on the moor
+and loch, in garden and forest, and writes of what he sees and feels. It
+is a volume of excellent gossip, the note-book of a well-informed and
+high-spirited student of Nature, where the sportsman's ardour is
+tempered always with the sympathy of the lover of wild things, and the
+naturalist's interest is leavened with the humour of a cultivated man of
+the world. This is what gives the work its abiding charm, and makes
+these memories fill the place of old friends on the library bookshelf.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>SINGLE-HANDED CRUISING.</h2>
+
+<h3>By FRANCIS B. COOKE,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Author of "The Corinthian Yachtsman's Handbook," "Cruising Hints," Etc.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Illustrated.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>10s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The contents of this volume being based upon the author's many years'
+practical experience of single-handed sailing, are sure to be acceptable
+to those who, either from choice or necessity, make a practice of
+cruising alone. Of the four thousand or more yachts whose names appear
+in Lloyd's Register, quite a considerable proportion are small craft
+used for the most part for week-end cruising, and single-handed sailing
+is a proposition that the owner of a week-ender cannot afford altogether
+to ignore. To be dependent upon the assistance of friends, who may leave
+one in the lurch at the eleventh hour, is a miserable business that can
+only be avoided by having a yacht which one is capable of handling
+alone. The ideal arrangement is to have a vessel of sufficient size to
+accommodate one or two guests and yet not too large to be sailed
+single-handed at a pinch. In this book Mr. Cooke gives some valuable
+hints on the equipment and handling of such a craft, which, it may be
+remarked, can, in the absence of paid hands, be maintained at
+comparatively small cost.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>MODERN ROADS.</h2>
+
+<h3>By H. PERCY BOULNOIS, M. Inst. C.E., F.R. San. Inst., etc.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>16s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The author is well known as one of the leading authorities on
+road-making, and he deals at length with Traffic, Water-bound Macadam
+Roads, Surface Tarring, Bituminous Roads, Waves and Corrugations,
+Slippery Roads, Paved Streets (Stone and Wood, etc.), Concrete Road
+Construction, etc.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Dr.</span> M. R. JAMES,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Provost of Eton College.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>4s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The Provost of Eton needs no introduction as a past master of the art of
+making our flesh creep, and those who have enjoyed his earlier books may
+rest assured that his hand has lost none of its blood-curdling cunning.
+Neither is it necessary to remind them that Dr. James's inexhaustible
+stories of arch&aelig;ological erudition furnish him with a unique power of
+giving his gruesome tales a picturesque setting, and heightening by
+their literary and antiquarian charm the exquisite pleasure derived from
+thrills of imaginary terror. This latter quality has never been more
+happily displayed than in the stories contained in the present volume,
+which we submit with great confidence to the judgment of all who
+appreciate&mdash;and who does not?&mdash;a good old-fashioned hair-raising ghost
+story.</p>
+
+
+<br />
+<h3>New Editions.</h3>
+<hr style='width: 5%;' />
+
+<h2>GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Dr.</span> M. R. JAMES,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Provost of Eton College.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>New Edition. &nbsp; &nbsp; Crown 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>5s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<br />
+<h2>MORE GHOST STORIES.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Dr.</span> M. R. JAMES.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>New Edition. &nbsp; &nbsp; Crown 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>5s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<br />
+<h2>THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Captain</span> HARRY GRAHAM,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Author of "Ruthless Rhymes," etc.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>New Edition. &nbsp; &nbsp; Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>3s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+<br />
+<h2>THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN.</h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Captain</span> HARRY GRAHAM.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>New Edition. &nbsp; &nbsp; Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>3s. 6d. net.</b></h4>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[13]</a></span>
+<h3><i>The Modern Educator's Library.</i></h3>
+
+<h4>General Editor: Professor A. A. COCK.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The present age is seeing an unprecedented advance in educational theory
+and practice; its whole outlook on the ideals and methods of teaching is
+being widened. The aim of this new series is to present the considered
+views of teachers of wide experience, and eminent ability, upon the
+changes in method involved in this development, and upon the problems
+which still remain to be solved, in the several branches of teaching
+with which they are most intimately connected. It is hoped, therefore,
+that these volumes will be instructive not only to teachers, but to all
+who are interested in the progress of education.</p>
+
+<p>Each volume contains an index and a comprehensive bibliography of the
+subject with which it deals.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>EDUCATION: ITS DATA AND FIRST PRINCIPLES.</h2>
+
+<h3>By T. PERCY NUNN, M.A., D.Sc.,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Professor of Education in the University of London; Author of "The Aims
+and Achievements of Scientific Method," "The Teaching of Algebra," Etc.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>6s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>Dr. Nunn's volume really forms an introduction to the whole series, and
+deals with the fundamental questions which lie at the root of
+educational inquiry. The first is that of the aims of education. These,
+he says, are always correlative to ideals of life, and, as ideals of
+life are eternally at variance, their conflict will be reflected in
+educational theories. The individualism of post-reformation Europe
+gradually gave way to a reaction culminating in Hegel, which pictured
+the state as the superentity of which the single life is but a fugitive
+element. The logical result of this Hegelian ideal the world has just
+seen, and educators of to-day have to decide whether to foster this
+sinister tradition or to help humanity to escape from it to something
+better. What we need is a doctrine which, while admitting the importance
+of the social element in man, reasserts the importance of the
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>This notion of individuality as the ideal of life is worked out at
+length, and on the results of this investigation are based the
+conclusions which are reached upon the practical problem of embodying
+this ideal in teaching. Among other subjects, the author deals with
+Routine and Ritual, Play, Nature and Nurture, Imitation, Instinct; and
+there is a very illuminating last chapter on "The School and the
+Individual."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.</h2>
+
+<h3>By SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc., Litt.D.</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Late Head Mistress of the North London Collegiate School for Girls
+Author of "Educational Ends," etc.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>6s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>In this book, Mrs. Bryant, whose writings on educational subjects are
+widely known, takes the view that in order to produce the best result
+over the widest area, the teaching of morality through the development
+of religious faith, and its teaching by direct appeal to self-respect,
+reason, sympathy and common sense, are both necessary. In religion, more
+than in anything else, different individuals must follow different paths
+to the goal.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this basis the book falls into four parts. The first deals with the
+processes of spiritual self-realisation by means of interest in
+knowledge and art, and of personal affections and social interest, which
+all emerge in the development of conscience. The second part treats of
+the moral ideal and how it is set forth by means of heroic romance and
+history, and in the teaching of Aristotle, to build up the future
+citizen. The third presents the religious ideal, its beginnings and the
+background of ideas implied by it, together with suggestions for study
+of the Bible and the lives of the Saints. In the fourth part the problem
+of the reasoned presentment of religious truths is dealt with in detail.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that this book makes a very considerable addition to
+what has already been written on the subject of religious education.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>THE TEACHING OF MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.</h2>
+
+<h3>By H. G. ATKINS, M.A.,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Professor of German in King's College, University of London, and
+University Reader in German,</span></h4>
+
+<h4>AND</h4>
+
+<h3>H. L. HUTTON, M.A.,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Senior Modern Language Master at Merchant Taylors' School.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>6s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The first part of this book deals with the School, the second with the
+University. While each part is mainly written by one of the authors,
+they have acted in collaboration and have treated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[15]</a></span> the two subjects as
+interdependent. They have referred only briefly to the main features of
+the past history, and have chiefly tried to give a broad survey of the
+present position of modern language teaching, and the desirable policy
+for the future.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the School, conclusions are first reached as to the relative
+amount of time to be devoted to modern languages in the curriculum, and
+the various branches of the subject&mdash;its organisation and methods, the
+place of grammar and the history of the language&mdash;are then discussed. A
+chapter is devoted to the questions relating to the second foreign
+language, and the study is linked up with the University course.</p>
+
+<p>In the second part Professor Atkins traces the different ends to which
+the School course continued at the University may lead, with special
+reference to the higher Civil Service Examinations and to the training
+of Secondary School Teachers.</p>
+
+<p>The general plan of the book was worked out before the publication of
+the report of the Government Committee appointed by the Prime Minister
+to enquire into the position of Modern Languages in the educational
+system of Great Britain. With the report, however, the authors'
+conclusions were in the main found to agree, and the text of the book
+has been brought up-to-date by references to the report which have been
+made in footnotes as well as in places in the text. No further
+modifications were thought to be necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The book will be found to give a comprehensive review of the whole field
+of modern language teaching and some valuable help towards the solution
+of its problems.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>THE CHILD UNDER EIGHT.</h2>
+
+<h3>By E. R. MURRAY,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Vice-Principal of Maria Grey Training College; Author of "Froebel as a
+Pioneer in Modern Psychology," etc.,</span></h4>
+
+<h4>AND</h4>
+
+<h3>HENRIETTA BROWN SMITH, LL.A.,</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Lecturer in Education, Goldsmith's College, University of London; Editor
+of "Education by Life."</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Crown 8vo. &nbsp; &nbsp; Cloth.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>6s. net.</b></h4>
+
+<p>The authors of this book deal with the young child at the outset of its
+education, a stage the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. The
+volume is written in two parts, the first dealing with the child in the
+Nursery and Kindergarten, and the second with the child in the State
+School. Much that is said is naturally applicable to either form of
+School, and, where this is so, repetition has been avoided by means of
+cross references.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The authors find that the great weakness of English education in the
+past has been want of a definite aim to put before the children, and the
+want of a philosophy for the teacher. Without some understanding of the
+meaning and purpose of life the teacher is at the mercy of every fad,
+and is apt to exalt method above principle. This book is an attempt to
+gather together certain recognised principles, and to show in the light
+of actual experience how these may be applied to existing circumstances.
+They put forward a strong plea for the recognition of the true value of
+Play, the "spontaneous activity in all directions," and for courage and
+faith on the part of the teacher to put this recognition into practice;
+and they look forward to the time when the conditions of public
+Elementary Schools, from the Nursery School up, will be such&mdash;in point
+of numbers, space, situation and beauty of surroundings&mdash;that parents of
+any class will gladly let their children attend them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 5%;' />
+
+<h4><i>Further volumes in this series are in preparation and will be published
+shortly.</i></h4>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h2>FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MUSIC.</h2>
+
+<h3>By F. J. READ, <span class="smcap">Mus. Doc.</span> (<span class="smcap">Oxon.</span>)</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Formerly Professor at the Royal College of Music.</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Crown 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>1s. 6d.</b></h4>
+
+<p>This book is the result of the author's long experience as Professor of
+Theory at the Royal College of Music, and is the clearest and most
+concise treatise of the kind that has yet been written.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is a useful little book, covering a wider field than any
+other of the kind that we know."&mdash;<i>The Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is calculated to quicken interest in various subjects
+outside the normal scope of an elementary musical grammar. The
+illustrated chapter on orchestral instruments, for instance, is
+a welcome and stimulating innovation."&mdash;<i>Daily Telegraph.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<h3>LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 &amp; 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 1.</h3>
+
+
+<br /><br />
+<b>Transcriber's Notes:</b><br />
+hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the original<br />
+Page 21, Azizieh possibly should be Aziziah, but left as is<br />
+Page 58, no common languge ==> no common language<br />
+Page 81, smallest detail, for month ==> smallest detail, for months<br />
+Page 85, supected of something ==> suspected of something<br />
+Page 123, Mr. Morgenthan ==> Mr. Morgenthau<br />
+Announcements at end, page 3, Bagdhad venture ==> Baghdad venture
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Caught by the Turks, by Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAUGHT BY THE TURKS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37343-h.htm or 37343-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/3/4/37343/
+
+Produced by Barbara Watson, Ross Cooling, Mark Akrigg and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
+http://www.pgdpcanada.net ((This file was produced from
+images generously made available by The Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries))
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caught by the Turks, by Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Caught by the Turks
+
+Author: Francis Yeats-Brown
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2011 [EBook #37343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAUGHT BY THE TURKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Watson, Ross Cooling, Mark Akrigg and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
+http://www.pgdpcanada.net ((This file was produced from
+images generously made available by The Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries))
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CAUGHT BY THE TURKS
+
+  BY
+  FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN
+
+
+  WITH PORTRAITS AND PLANS
+
+
+  LONDON
+  EDWARD ARNOLD
+  1919
+  [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  LADY PAUL
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                                        PAGE
+     I. CAPTURE                                     1
+    II. A SHADOWLAND OF ARABESQUES                 25
+   III. THE TERRIBLE TURK                          42
+    IV. "OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION"                 56
+     V. THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS            75
+    VI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON                   95
+   VII. THE COMIC HOSPITAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE      102
+  VIII. OUR FIRST ESCAPE                          122
+    IX. A CITY OF DISGUISES                       140
+     X. RECAPTURED                                159
+    XI. THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE          172
+   XII. OUR SECOND ESCAPE                         198
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             PAGE
+
+  THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE AT PSAMATTIA, CONSTANTINOPLE      137
+
+  THE AUTHOR AS A GERMAN GOVERNESS               _facing p._  154
+
+  THE AUTHOR AS A HUNGARIAN MECHANIC             _facing p._  170
+
+  THE SQUARE OF THE SERASKERAT, CONSTANTINOPLE                213
+
+
+
+
+  CAUGHT BY THE TURKS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  CAPTURE
+
+
+Half an hour before dawn on November the thirteenth, 1915. . . .
+
+We were on an aerodrome by the River Tigris, below Baghdad, about to
+start out to cut the telegraph lines behind the Turkish position.
+
+My pilot ran his engine to free the cylinders from the cold of night,
+while I stowed away in the body of the machine some necklaces of
+gun-cotton, some wire cutters, a rifle, Verey lights, provisions, and
+the specially prepared map--prepared for the eventuality of its falling
+into the hands of the Turks--on which nothing was traced except our
+intended route to the telegraph lines west and north of Baghdad. Some
+primers, which are the explosive charges designed to detonate the
+gun-cotton, I carefully stowed away in another part of the machine, and
+with even more care--trepidation, indeed--I put into my pockets the
+highly explosive pencils of fulminate of mercury, which detonate the
+primers which detonate the gun-cotton.
+
+Then I climbed gingerly aboard, feeling rather highly charged with
+explosives and excitement.
+
+For some time the pilot continued to run his engine and watch the
+revolution meter. The warmer the engine became, the colder I got, for
+the prelude to adventure is always a chilly business. Unlike the engine,
+I did not warm to my work during those waiting moments. At last,
+however, the pilot waved his hand to give the signal to stand clear, and
+we slid away on the flight that was to be our last for many a day. The
+exhaust gases of our engine lit the darkness behind me with a ring of
+fire. I looked back as we taxied down the aerodrome, and saw the
+mechanics melting away to their morning tea. Only one figure remained, a
+young pilot in a black and yellow fur coat, who had left his warm bed to
+wish us luck. For a moment I saw him standing there, framed in flame,
+looking after us regretfully. Then I saw him no more, and later they
+told me (but it was not true) that he had died at Ctesiphon.
+
+We rose over the tents of our camp at Aziziah, all silver and still in
+the half-light, and headed for the Turkish outposts at El Kutunieh.
+Their bivouac fires mounted straight to heaven. It was a calm and
+cloudless dawn, ideal weather for the business we had been sent out to
+do.
+
+At all costs, we had been told, the telegraphic communications west and
+north of Baghdad must be cut that day. Von der Goltz and a German
+battery of quick-firing guns were hasting down from Mosul to help their
+stricken ally, and reinforcements of the best Anatolian troops,
+magnificently equipped and organised by the Germans, were on their way
+from Gallipoli, whence they came flushed with the confidence of success.
+
+Our attack on Ctesiphon was imminent. It was a matter of moments whether
+the Turkish reinforcements would arrive in time. Delay and confusion in
+the Turkish rear would have helped us greatly, and the moral and
+material advantage of cutting communications between Nur-ed-Din, the
+vacillating Commander-in-Chief defending Baghdad, and Von der Goltz, the
+veteran of victories, was obvious and unquestionable. But could we do it
+in an old Maurice Farman biplane?
+
+Desperate needs need desperate measures. The attempt to take Baghdad was
+desperate--futile perhaps--and contrary to the advice of the great
+soldier who led the attack in the glorious but unsuccessful action of
+Ctesiphon. And so also, in a small way, ours was a desperate mission.
+Our machine could carry neither oil nor petrol enough for the journey,
+and special arrangements had to be made for carrying spare tins of
+lubricant and fuel. With these we were to refill at our first halt.
+While I was destroying the telegraph line, my pilot was to replenish the
+tanks of his machine. According to the map this should have been
+feasible, for the telegraph lines at the place we had selected for our
+demolition ran through a blank desert, two miles from the nearest track.
+That the map was wrong we did not know.
+
+All seemed quite hopeful therefore. We had got off "according to plan,"
+and the engine was running beautifully.
+
+It was stimulating to see the stir of El Kutunieh as we sailed over the
+Turks at a thousand feet. They ran to take cover from the bombs which
+had so often greeted them at sunrise; but for once we sailed placidly
+on, having other fish to fry, and left them to the pleasures of
+anticipation. Far behind us a few puffs from their ridiculous apology
+for an anti-aircraft gun blossomed like sudden flowers and then melted
+in the sunlight above the world. Below, in the desert, it was still
+dark. Men were rubbing their eyes in El Kutunieh and cursing us.
+
+But for us day had dawned. As we rose, there rose behind us a round
+cheerful sun, whose rays caught our trail and spangled it with light,
+and danced in my eyes as I looked back through the propeller, and lit up
+the celluloid floor of the nacelle as if to help me see my implements.
+That dawn was jubilant with hope--I felt inclined to dance. And I sang
+from sheer exhilaration--a sort of swan song (as I see it now) before
+captivity. The desert seemed barren no longer. Transmuted by the sunrise
+those "miles and miles of nothing at all" became a limitless expanse
+where all the kingdoms of the world were spread out before our eyes.
+Away to the east the Tigris wound like a snake among the sands; to
+westward, a huddle of houses and date-palms with an occasional gleam
+from the gold domes of Kazimain, lay the city of the Arabian Nights,
+where Haroun al Raschid once reigned, and where now there is hope his
+spirit may reign again. Baghdad nestled among its date-palms, with
+little wisps of cloud still shrouding its sleep, all unconscious of the
+great demonstration it was to give before noon to two forlorn and
+captive airmen. To the north lay the Great Desert with a hint of violet
+hills on the far horizon. To the south also lay the Great Desert, with
+no feature on its yellow face save the scar of some irrigation cut made
+in the twilight time of history.
+
+But the beauties of Nature were not for us: we were intent on the works
+of man. There was unwonted traffic across the bridge over the great Arch
+of Ctesiphon. The enemy river craft were early astir, and so were their
+antediluvian Archies. These latter troubled us no more than was their
+wont, but the activity at Qusaibah and Sulman Pak was disquieting.
+Trains of carts were moving across the river from the right to the left
+bank. Tugs, gravid with troops, were on their way from Baghdad. In
+trenches and gun emplacements feverish work was in progress. Like ants
+at a burrow, men were dragging overhead cover into place. Lines of
+fatigue parties were marching hither and thither. New support trenches
+were being dug.
+
+As always, when one saw these things, one longed for more eyes, better
+eyes, an abler pencil, to record them for our staff. An observer has
+great responsibilities at times: one cannot help remembering that a
+missed obstruction, a forgotten emplacement may mean a terrible toll of
+suffering. Our men would soon attack these trenches, relying largely on
+our photographs and information. . . . When, a week later, there rose
+above the battle the souls of all the brave men dead at Ctesiphon,
+seeing then with clearer eyes than mine, I pray they forgave our
+shortcomings and remembered we did our best.
+
+We could not circle over Ctesiphon, in spite of the interest we saw
+there, until our duty was performed, and had to fly on, leaving it to
+eastward.
+
+On the return journey, however, we promised ourselves as full an
+investigation as our petrol supply allowed, and had we returned with our
+report on what we had seen and done that day, things might have been
+very different. But what's the use of might-have-beens?
+
+After an hour's flying we sighted the telegraph line that was our
+objective, but when we approached it more closely a sad surprise awaited
+us, for instead of the blank surface which the map portrayed, we found
+that the line ran along a busy thoroughfare leading to Baghdad. Some ten
+thousand camels, it seemed to my disappointed eyes, were swaying and
+slouching towards the markets of the capital. We came low to observe the
+traffic better, and the camels craned their long necks upwards, burbling
+with surprise at this great new bird they had never seen. The ships of
+the desert, it seemed to me, disliked the ship of the air as much as we
+disapproved of them.
+
+Besides the camels, there were ammunition carts and armed soldiers along
+the road, making a landing impossible. Our demolition would only take
+three minutes under favourable conditions, but in three minutes even an
+Arab soldier can be trusted to hit an aeroplane and two airmen at
+point-blank range.
+
+So we flew westward down the road, looking for a landing ground. Baghdad
+was behind us now. On our right lay a great lake, and ahead we got an
+occasional glimpse of the Euphrates in the morning sun. At last--near a
+mound, which we afterwards heard was Nimrod's tomb--we saw that the
+telegraph line took a turn to northward, leaving the road by a mile or
+more. Here we decided to land. Nimrod's tomb was to be the tomb of our
+activities.
+
+While we were circling down I felt exactly as one feels at the start of
+a race, watching for the starting gate to rise. It was a tense but
+delightful moment.
+
+We made a perfect landing, and ran straight and evenly towards the
+telegraph posts. I had already stripped myself of my coat and all
+unnecessary gear, and wore sandshoes in case I had to climb a post to
+get at the insulators. The detonators were in my pocket, the wire
+clippers hung at my belt. I stooped down to take a necklace of
+gun-cotton from the floor of the 'bus, and as I did so, I felt a slight
+bump and a slight splintering of wood.
+
+We had stopped.
+
+I jumped out of the machine, still sure that all was well. And then----
+
+Then I saw that our left wing tip had crashed into a telegraph post.
+Even so the full extent of our disaster dawned slowly on me. I could not
+believe that we had broken something vital. Yet the pilot was quite
+sure.
+
+The leading edge of the plane was broken. Our flying days were finished.
+It had been my pilot's misfortune, far more than his fault, that we had
+crashed. The unexpected smoothness of the landing ground, and a rear
+wind that no one could have foreseen, had brought about disaster.
+Nothing could be done. I stood silent--while hope sank from its zenith,
+to the nadir of disappointment. Nothing remained--except to do our job.
+
+With light feet but heart of lead, I ran across to another telegraph
+post, leaving the pilot to ascertain whether by some miracle we might
+not be able to get our machine to safety. But even as I left him I knew
+that there was no hope; the only thing that remained was to destroy the
+line and then take our chance with the Arabs.
+
+By the time I had fixed the explosive necklace round the post, a few
+stray Arabs, who had been watching our descent, fired at us from
+horseback. I set the fuse and lit it, then strolled back to the machine,
+where the pilot confirmed my worst fears. The machine was unflyable.
+
+Presently there was a loud bang. The charge had done its work and the
+post was neatly cut in two.
+
+Horsemen were now appearing from the four quarters of the desert. On
+hearing the explosion the mounted men instantly wheeled about and
+galloped off in the opposite direction, while those on foot took cover,
+lying flat on their faces. To encourage the belief in our aggressive
+force, the pilot stood on the seat of the 'bus and treated them to
+several bursts of rapid fire.
+
+Meanwhile, I took another necklace of gun-cotton and returned to my
+demolition. This second charge I affixed to the wires and insulators of
+the fallen post, so as to render repair more difficult. While I was thus
+engaged, I noticed that spurts of sand were kicking up all about me. The
+fire had increased in accuracy and intensity. So accurate indeed had it
+become that I guessed that the Arabs (who cannot hit a haystack) had
+been reinforced by regulars. I lit the fuse and covered the hundred
+yards back to the machine in my very best time (which is about fifteen
+seconds) to get cover and companionship. A hot fire was being directed
+on to the machine now, at ranges varying from fifty to five hundred
+yards. It was not a pleasant situation, and I experienced a curious
+mixed feeling of regret and relief: regret that there was nothing more
+to do, relief that something at least had been accomplished to earn the
+long repose before us. On the nature of this repose I had never
+speculated, and even now the fate that awaited us seemed immaterial so
+long as something happened quickly. One wanted to get it over. I was
+very frightened, I suppose.
+
+Bang!
+
+The second charge had exploded, and the telegraph wires whipped back and
+festooned themselves round our machine. The insulators were dust, no
+doubt, and the damage would probably take some days to repair. So far so
+good. Our job was done in so far as it lay in our power to do it.
+
+"Do you see that fellow in blue?" said the pilot to me, pointing to a
+ferocious individual about a hundred yards away who was brandishing a
+curved cutlass. "I think it must be an officer. We had better give
+ourselves up to him when the time comes."
+
+I cordially agreed, but rather doubted that the time would ever come. It
+speaks volumes for Arab marksmanship that they missed our machine about
+as often as they hit it.
+
+I destroyed a few private papers, and then, as it was obviously useless
+to return the fire of two hundred men with a single rifle, we started up
+the engine again, more with the idea of doing something than with any
+hope of getting away.
+
+The machine, it may be mentioned, was not to be destroyed in the event
+of a breakdown such as this, because our army hoped to be in Baghdad
+within a week, and it would have been impossible for the Turks to carry
+it with them in the case of a retreat.
+
+The Arabs hesitated to advance, and still continued to pour in a hot
+fire. Feeling the situation was becoming ridiculous, I got into the
+aeroplane and determined to attempt flying it. Now I am not a pilot, and
+know little of machines. The pilot had pronounced the aeroplane to be
+unflyable, and very rightly did not accompany me.
+
+But I was pigheaded and determined "to have one more flip in the old
+'bus." After disentangling the wires that had whipped round the king
+posts, I got into the pilot's seat and taxied away down wind. Then I
+turned, managing the operation with fair success, and skimmed back
+towards the pilot with greatly increasing speed. But all my efforts did
+not succeed in making the machine lift clear of the ground. Some Arabs
+were now rushing towards the pilot, and a troop of mounted gendarmes
+were galloping in my direction. I tried to swerve to avoid these men,
+but could not make the machine answer to her controls. Then I pulled the
+stick back frantically in a last effort to rise above them. She gave a
+little hop, then floundered down in the middle of the cavalry.
+
+Somehow or other the 'bus was standing still, and I was on the ground
+beside it.
+
+Mounted gendarmes surrounded me with rifles levelled, not at me, but at
+the machine. I cocked my revolver and put it behind my back, hesitating.
+Then an old gendarme spurred his horse up to me and held out his right
+hand in the friendliest possible fashion. I grasped it in surprise, for
+the grip he gave me was a grip I knew, proving that even here in the
+desert men are sometimes brothers. Then, emptying out the cartridges
+from my revolver in case of accidents, I handed it to him. Not very
+heroic certainly--but then surrendering is a sorry business: the best
+that can be said for it is that it is sometimes common sense.
+
+At that moment the gentleman in blue, whose appearance we had previously
+discussed, suddenly appeared behind me and swinging up his scimitar with
+both hands, struck me a violent blow where neck joins shoulder. This
+blow deprived me of all feeling for a moment. On coming-to I discovered
+that my aggressor was not dressed in blue at all; he wore no stitch of
+raiment of any description, but whether he was painted with woad or only
+tanned by the sun I had no opportunity of enquiring. Whether, again, the
+kindly gendarme had turned the blow or whether the _ghazi_ had purposely
+hit me with the flat of his weapon, I never discovered; but of this much
+I am certain, that except for that kindly gendarme--to whom may Allah
+bring blessings--this story would not have been written.
+
+I made my way to the pilot as soon as I was able to do so, and found him
+bleeding profusely from a wound in the head, surrounded by a hundred
+tearing, screaming Arabs. Every minute, the number of the Arabs was
+increasing, and the gendarmes had the greatest difficulty in protecting
+us. All round us excited horsemen circled, firing _feux de joie_ and
+uttering hoarse cries of exultation. We were making slow progress
+towards the police post about a mile distant, but at times, so fiercely
+did the throng press round us, I doubted if we should ever come through.
+
+Once, yielding to popular clamour, the police stopped and parleyed with
+some Arab chiefs who had arrived upon the scene. After a heated colloquy
+of which we did not understand one word, in spite of our not unnatural
+interest, the Turkish gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and appeared to
+accede to the Arabs' demands. Several of the more ruffianly among them
+seized the pilot and pulled his flying coat over his head. The memory of
+that moment is the most unpleasant in my life, and I cannot, try as I
+will, entirely dissociate myself from the horror of what I thought would
+happen. Even now it often holds sleep at arm's length. Not the fact of
+death, but the imagined manner of it, dismayed me. I bitterly regretted
+having surrendered my revolver only to be thus tamely murdered.
+
+Meanwhile I had been also seized and borne down under a crowd of Arabs.
+We fought for some time, and I had a glimpse of the pilot, who is a very
+clever boxer, upholding British traditions with his fists. . . .
+
+Suddenly the scene changed from tragedy to farce. We were not going to
+be murdered at all, but only robbed. And the pilot had given our _ghazi_
+friend a black eye--blacker than his skin.
+
+At length I got free, minus all my possessions except my wrist watch,
+which they did not see, and saw that the pilot also had his head above
+the scrimmage, still "bloody but unbowed." The worst was over. That had
+been the climax of my capture.
+
+All that happened thereafter, until chances of escape occurred, was in a
+_diminuendo_ of emotion.
+
+All I really longed for now was for something to smoke. My cigarette
+case had gone.
+
+The gendarmes, who had stood aside through these proceedings, now
+returned and hurried us towards the police post, while most of the
+captors remained behind disputing about our loot. All this time the
+machine had been absolutely neglected, but now I saw some Arabs stalking
+cautiously up to it and discharging their firearms. Feeling the machine
+would be damaged beyond repair if they continued firing at it, and so
+rendered useless to us after our imminent capture of Baghdad, I tried to
+explain to the gendarmes that it was quite unnecessary to waste good
+lead on it, its potentiality for evil having vanished with our
+surrender. The impression I conveyed, however, was that there was a
+third officer in the machine, and a large party adjourned to
+investigate. During this diversion I tried to jump on to a white mare,
+whose owner had left her to go towards the machine, but received a
+second nasty blow on the spine for my pains. Again the kindly gendarme
+came to my rescue, seeing, I suppose, that I was looking pretty blue. He
+addressed me as "Baba," and--may Allah give him increase!--gave me a
+cigarette.
+
+At last we got to the police post, and, as we entered and passed through
+a dark stable passage, the gendarme on my left side, noticing my wrist
+watch, slyly detached it and pocketed it with a meaning smile. As the
+price of police protection I did not grudge it.
+
+Big doors clanged behind us and our captivity proper had begun: what had
+gone before had been more like a scrum at Rugger, with ourselves as the
+ball.
+
+We examined our injuries and bruises, and I tried to dress the wounds on
+the pilot's head, with little success, however, for our guardians could
+provide nothing but the most brackish water, and disinfectants were
+undreamed of. We discussed our future at some length, and agreed that
+our best plan was to be recaptured in Baghdad on the taking of that
+city. To this end we decided that it would be advisable to make the most
+of our injuries, so that when the Turkish retreat took place we would
+not be in a fit condition to accompany it. To feign sickness would not,
+indeed, be difficult. I felt that every bone in my body was broken, and
+my pilot was in an even worse condition.
+
+Meanwhile there was a great clamour and "confused noises without," which
+seemed to refer insistently and unpleasantly to us. On asking what the
+people were saying, we were informed that the Arabs wanted to take our
+heads to the Turkish Commander-in-Chief at Suleiman Pak, whereas the
+gendarmes pointed out that there would be far greater profit and
+pleasure in taking us there alive. We cordially agreed, and did not join
+the discussion, feeling it to be more academic than practical, as we
+were quite safe in the police post.
+
+We had neither hats nor overcoats, but we each still retained our
+jackets and breeches, though in a very torn condition. I was still in
+possession of my sandshoes, probably because the Arabs did not think
+them worth the taking.
+
+Considering things calmly, we felt that we were lucky. This bondage
+would not last. We would surely fly again, perhaps soon. But for a week
+or so we must accustom ourselves to new conditions. Everything was
+strange about us, and it struck me at once how close a parallel there is
+between the drama of Captivity and the drama of Life. In each case there
+is a "curtain," and in each case a man enters into a new world whose
+language and customs he does not know. Almost naked we came to our
+bondage, dumb, bloody, disconcerted by the whole business. So, perhaps,
+do infants feel at the world awaiting their ken: it is taken for
+granted that they enjoy life, and so also our captors were convinced
+that we should feel delighted at our situation.
+
+"We saved you from the Arabs," we understood them to say, "and now you
+are safe until the war is over. You need do no more work."
+
+Such at any rate was my estimate of what they said, but being in an
+unknown tongue, it was only necessary to nod in answer.
+
+Tea was brought to us, sweet, weak tea in little glasses, and we made
+appreciative noises. Then the kindly gendarme--may he be rewarded in
+both worlds--brought each of us some cigarettes, in return for which we
+gave him our brightest smiles, having nothing else to give.
+
+But one could not smile for long in that little room, thinking of the
+sun and air outside and the old 'bus lying wrecked in the desert. We
+would have been flying back now; we would have reconnoitred the Turkish
+lines; we would have been back by nine o'clock to breakfast, bath, and
+glory. . . .
+
+"It's the thirteenth of the month," groaned the pilot, whose thoughts
+were similar to mine.
+
+For a long time I sulked in silence, while the pilot, with better
+manners or more vitality than I, engaged the gendarmes in light
+conversation, conducted chiefly by gesture. About an hour later (a "day"
+of the Creation, it seemed to me--and it was indeed a formative time,
+when the mind, so long accustomed to range free, seeks to adjust its
+processes to captivity and adapt itself to new conditions of time and
+space) there occurred at last a diversion to interrupt my gloom.
+
+The Turkish District Governor arrived with two carriages to take us to
+Baghdad. He spoke English and was agreeable in a mild sort of way,
+except for his unfortunate habit of asking questions which we could not
+answer. He told us that news of our descent and capture had been sent to
+Baghdad by gallopers (not by telegram, I noted parenthetically) and that
+the population was awaiting our arrival. I said that I hoped the
+population would not be disappointed, and he assured us with a
+significant smile that they certainly would not.
+
+"Whatever happens," he was kind enough to add, "I will be responsible
+for your lives myself."
+
+His meaning became apparent a little later, when we approached the
+suburbs of Baghdad and found an ugly crowd awaiting our arrival, armed
+with sticks and stones. When we reached the city itself the streets were
+lined as if for a royal procession. Shops had put up their shutters, the
+markets were closed, the streets were thronged, and every window held
+its quota of heads. The word had gone out that there was to be a
+demonstration, and the hysteria which lurks in every city in a time of
+crisis found its fullest scope. Our downfall was taken as an omen of
+British defeat, and the inhabitants of Baghdad held high holiday at the
+sight of captive British airmen.
+
+Elderly merchants wagged their white beards and cursed us as we passed;
+children danced with rage, and threw mud; lines of Turkish women pulled
+back their veils in scorn, and putting out their tongues at us cried
+"La, la, la," in a curious note of derision; boys brandished knives;
+babies shook their little fists. No hated Tarquins could have had a more
+hostile demonstration. We were both spat upon. A man with a heavy cudgel
+aimed a blow at my pilot which narrowly missed him, another with a long
+dagger stabbed through the back of the carriage and was dragged away
+with difficulty: I can still see his snarling face and _hashish_-haunted
+eyes. Our escort could hardly force a way for our carriage through the
+narrow streets. All this time we sat trying to look dignified and
+smoking constant cigarettes. . . . State arrival of British prisoners in
+Baghdad--what a scene it would have been for the cinematograph!
+
+Arrived at the river, a space was cleared round us, and we were embarked
+with a great deal of fuss in a boat to take us across to the Governor's
+palace. Before leaving, I said goodbye to the kindly gendarme who had
+helped a brother in distress, and once more now, across the wasted years
+of captivity and the turmoil of my life to-day, I grasp his hand in
+gratitude.
+
+Our first interview in Baghdad was with a journalist. He was very polite
+and anxious for our impressions, but I told him that the Arabs had given
+us quite enough impressions for the day, and that words could not
+adequately express what we felt at our arrival in Baghdad. We chiefly
+wanted a wash.
+
+That afternoon we were taken to hospital, and to our surprise (for,
+being new to the conditions of captivity, we were still susceptible to
+surprise) we found that we were very well treated there. Two sentries,
+however, stood at our open door day and night to watch our every
+movement. When the Governor of Baghdad came to see us that evening
+(thoughtfully bringing with him a bottle of whisky) I politely told him
+(in French, a language he spoke fluently) that so much consideration had
+been shown to us that I hoped he would not mind my asking whether we
+could not have a little more privacy. The continual presence of the
+sentries was a little irksome. He understood my point perfectly--much
+too perfectly. Taking me to the window, he spoke smoothly, as follows:
+
+"I am so sorry the sentries disturb you, but I feel responsible for your
+safety, and should you by any chance fall out of that window--it is not
+so very far from the ground, you see--you might get into bad hands. I
+assure you that Baghdad is full of wicked men."
+
+The Governor was too clever. There was no chance with him of securing
+more favourable conditions for escape, so we turned to the discussion of
+the whisky bottle. As in all else he did, he had an object, I soon
+discovered, in bringing this forbidden fluid. His purpose, of course,
+was to make us talk, and talk we did, under its generous and
+unaccustomed influence, for it had been some time since we had seen
+spirits in our own mess at Azizieh. I would much like to see the report
+that the Turkish Intelligence Staff made of that wonderful conversation.
+Several officers had dropped in--casually--to join in the talk, and we
+told them we had lost our way; then our engine had stopped, and we
+landed as near to some village as we could. We knew nothing of an attack
+on Baghdad, we did not know General Townshend, but had certainly heard
+of him. We had heard a rumour that he had defeated the Turks at Es-sinn
+a month previously, and would like to know the truth of the matter.
+Eventually the bottle was exhausted, and so were our imaginations. We
+parted with the utmost cordiality and a firm intention of seeing as
+little of each other as possible in the future.
+
+In the street below our window were some large earthenware jars, like
+those in which the Forty Thieves had hidden aforetime in this very city,
+and for about a day we considered the story of Aladdin, in regard to the
+possibility of escape by getting into these jars; but just as we had
+made our plans the jars were removed, being taken no doubt to the
+support trenches, which were found by our troops excellently provided
+with water.
+
+As the day grew near for our attack, we saw many thousand Arabs being
+marched down to Ctesiphon. It was no conquering army this, no freemen
+going to defend their native land, but miserable bands of slaves being
+sent into subjection. Down to the river bank, where they were embarked
+on lighters, they were followed by their weeping relatives. There was no
+pretence at heroism. They would have escaped if they could, but the
+Turks had taken care of that. They were tied together by fours, their
+right hand being lashed to a wooden yoke, while their left was employed
+in carrying a rifle. These unfortunate creatures were taken to a spot
+near the trenches and were then transferred, still securely tied
+together, to the worst dug and most-exposed part of the line. Machine
+guns were then posted behind them to block all possible lines of
+retreat. In addition to minor discomforts such as bearing the brunt of
+our attack, the Arabs, so I was told, were frequently unprovided with
+provisions and water, so it is small wonder that their demeanour did not
+show the fire of battle. But _Kannonen-futter_ was required for
+Ctesiphon, and down the river this pageant of dejected pacifists had to
+go.
+
+After the attack had begun, shiploads of these same men returned
+wounded, and arrived in our hospital in an indescribably pitiable
+condition. There were no stretchers, and the wounded were left to shift
+for themselves, relying on charity and the providence of Allah. The
+blind led the blind, the halt helped the lame.
+
+Later, wounded Anatolian soldiers began also to arrive, and their plight
+was no less wretched than that of the Arabs, though their behaviour was
+incomparably better. One could not help admiring their stoicism in the
+face of terrible and often unnecessary suffering. The utter lack of
+system in dealing with casualties was hardly more remarkable than the
+fortitude of the casualties themselves. When a proclamation was read to
+the sufferers in our hospital, announcing the success of the Turkish
+arms at Ctesiphon, the wounded seemed to forget their pain and the dying
+acquired a new lease of life. I actually saw a man with a mortal wound
+in the head, who a few minutes previously had been choking and literally
+at his last gasp, rally all his forces to utter thanks to God, and then
+die.
+
+Never for a moment had we thought that the attack on Ctesiphon could
+fail. The odds, we knew, were heavily against us, but we firmly believed
+that General Townshend would achieve the impossible. That he did not do
+so was not his fault nor the fault of the gallant men he led. But this
+is a record of my personal experiences only, and I will spare the reader
+all the long reflections and alternations of anxiety and hope which held
+our thoughts while the guns boomed down the Tigris and the fate of
+Baghdad--and our fate--was poised in the balance.
+
+At six o'clock one morning we were suddenly awakened and told that we
+must leave for Mosul immediately. By every possible means in our power
+we delayed the start, thinking our troops might come at any moment. But
+the Turkish sergeant who commanded our escort had definite orders that
+we were to be out of the city by nine o'clock. We drove in a carriage
+through mean streets, attracting no attention, for now the Baghdadis
+realised their danger. Before leaving, our sergeant paid a visit to his
+house, in order to collect his kit, leaving us at the door, guarded by
+four soldiers. His sisters came down to see him off and (being of
+progressive tendencies, I suppose) they were not veiled. It were crime
+indeed to have hidden such lustrous eyes and skin so fair.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  A SHADOWLAND OF ARABESQUES
+
+
+Some breath of reality, some call from the outer world of freedom came
+to us from the presence of these girls. They seemed the first real
+people I had seen in my captivity, femininity incarnate, human beings in
+a shadow-land of arabesques. They were happy and healthy and somehow
+outside the insanities of our world. For a moment they gazed at us in
+awe, and for another moment in complete sympathy: then they retired with
+little squeaks of laughter and busied themselves with their brother's
+baggage.
+
+When our preparations were complete and we set off on our long journey,
+they stood for a space at the casement window and waved us goodbye,
+looking quite charming. I vowed that if Fate by a happy chance were to
+lead us back to Baghdad with roles reversed, so that they, not we, were
+captives in the midst of foes, my first care would be to repay their
+kindly, though unspoken, sympathy. They were too human for the
+futilities of war, too amiable to have a hand in Armageddon.
+
+Only prisoners, I think, see the full absurdity of war. Only prisoners,
+to begin with, fully realise the gift of life. And only prisoners see
+war without its glamour, and realise completely the suffering behind
+the lines: the maimed, the blind, the women who weep. Only by a few of
+us in happy England has the full tragedy of war been realised. Mere
+words will never record it, but prisoners know "the heartbreak in the
+heart of things." To us who have been behind the scenes, far from the
+shouting and the tumult and the captains and the kings, the wretchedness
+of it all remains indelible. Nothing can make us forget the broken men
+and women, whose woes will haunt our times.
+
+But I was on the threshold of my experiences then, and the maidens of
+Baghdad soon passed from memory, I fear--vanishing like the mists of
+morning that hung over the river-bank at the outset of our journey.
+
+We travelled in that marvellous conveyance, the _araba_. To generalise
+from types is dangerous, but the _araba_ is certainly typical of Turkey.
+Its discomfort is as amazing as its endurance. It is a rickety cart with
+a mattress to sit on. A pole (frequently held together by string) to
+which two ponies are harnessed (frequently again with string) supplies
+the motive power, which is restrained by reins mended with string, or
+encouraged by a whip made of string. The contrivance is surmounted by a
+patchwork hood tied down with string. A few buckets and hay nets are
+strung between its crazy wheels. Such is the _araba_. How it holds
+together is a mystery as inscrutable as the East itself. If all the
+vitality expended in Turkey on starting upon a journey and continuing
+upon it were turned to other purposes, the land might flourish. But the
+philosophy which makes the _araba_ possible makes other activities
+impossible.
+
+A full two hours before the start, when the world is still blue with
+cold, travellers are summoned to leave their rest. Then the drivers
+begin to feed their ponies. When this is done they feed themselves.
+Then, leisurely, they load the baggage. Finally, when all seems ready,
+it occurs to somebody that it is impossible to leave before the cavalry
+escort is in saddle. "Ahmed Effendi" is called for. Everyone shouts for
+"Ahmed Effendi," who is sleeping soundly, like a sensible man. He wakes,
+and, to create a diversion perhaps, accuses a driver of stealing his
+chicken. The driver replies in suitable language. Meanwhile time passes.
+The disc of the sun cuts the horizon line of the desert, disclosing us
+all standing chill and cramped and bored and still unready. A pony has
+lain down in his harness, in an access of boredom, no doubt. A goat has
+stolen part of my scanty bread ration and is now browsing peacefully in
+the middle distance. Far away a cur is barking at the jackals. Some of
+our escort have retired to pray, others are still wrangling. Two or
+three are engaged in kicking the bored pony.
+
+After recovering from the goat my half-loaf, which is so much better
+than no bread in the desert, I watch with amazement the Turkish
+treatment of the pony. A skewer is produced and rammed into the
+unfortunate animal's left nostril. So barbarous does this seem that I am
+on the point of protesting, when suddenly the animal struggles to its
+feet, and stands shivering and wide-eyed and apparently well again.
+After the wound has been sponged and the pony given a few dates, it
+seems equal to fresh endeavour. The blood-letting has cleared its
+brain--and no wonder, poor beast.
+
+At length all seems ready. We climb into the _araba_. But we are not off
+yet. We sit for another hour while the drivers refresh themselves with a
+second breakfast. A rhyme keeps running through my frozen brain:
+
+  "Slow pass the hours--ah, passing slow--
+   My doom is worse than anything
+   Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe."
+
+But I did not realise then how lucky we were to be travelling by
+carriages at all. Nor did I realise what an honour it was to be
+presented to the local governors through whose districts we passed. It
+was only late in captivity, when merged in an undistinguished band of
+prisoners, that I understood the pomp and circumstance of our early
+days. Late in 1915 a prisoner was still a new sort of animal to the
+Turks. They were curious about us, and to some extent the curiosity was
+mutual. One kept comparing them with the descriptions in "Eoethen."
+
+Proceedings generally opened in a long low room. The local magnate sat
+at a desk, on which were set a saucer containing an inky sponge, a dish
+of sand, and some reed-pens. A scribe stood beside the _kaimakam_ and
+handed him documents, which he scrutinised as if they were works of art,
+holding them delicately in his left hand as a connoisseur might consider
+his porcelain. Then with a reed-pen he would scratch the document, still
+holding it in the palm of his hand, and after sprinkling it carefully
+with sand would return it to the scribe. All this was incidental to his
+conversation with us or with other members of the audience. There were
+never less than ten people in any of the rooms in which we were
+interviewed, and as they all made fragmentary remarks, one quoting a
+text from the Koran, another a French _bon mot_, and a third introducing
+some question of local politics, and as the governor asked us questions
+and signed papers and kept up a running commentary with his friends, one
+felt exactly like Alice at the Hatter's tea party.
+
+"A Turk does not listen to what you are saying," I have since been told,
+"he merely watches your expression." That this is true of the uneducated
+I have no doubt, and if correct about the educated Turk I daresay it is
+not to his discredit. Demeanour in Oriental countries counts for much.
+
+But at Samarra our demeanour was sorely tried. We had been travelling
+about three days in the desert, when we arrived at this desolate and
+dishevelled spot. I longed to lie down and shut my eyes, and forget
+about captivity for a bit, but no!--there came a summons to attend the
+ghastly social function I had already learned to loathe.
+
+The Governor of that place was a _tout a fait civilise_ Young Turk,
+sedentary, Semitic, and very disagreeable.
+
+"Is it true that you dropped bombs on the Mosque at Baghdad?" he asked.
+
+And--
+
+"Do you know that the population of Baghdad nearly killed you?"
+
+And--
+
+"Do you know that in another month the English will be driven into the
+Persian Gulf?" . . . and so on.
+
+We denied these soft impeachments, and then his method became more
+direct.
+
+"Some of your friends have been killed and captured," he said--"the
+commandant of your flying corps, for instance."
+
+Seeing us incredulous, he accurately described the Major's appearance.
+
+"And there is someone else," the _kaimakam_ continued in slow tones that
+iced my blood. "Someone who may be a friend of yours. A young pilot in a
+fur coat."
+
+My heart stood still.
+
+"He was killed by an Arab," the _kaimakam_ added. . . .
+
+Here I will skip a page or two of mental history. The defeat of my
+country, the death of my friend, the crumbling of my hopes: little
+indeed was left. . . . . .
+
+Let five dots supply the ugly blank. There is sorrow and failure enough
+in the world without speculating on tragedies that never happened.
+Baghdad was taken later, my friend proved to be captured, not killed,
+and I write this by Thames-side, not the Tigris.
+
+The inhabitants of Samarra are, I believe, the most ill-balanced people
+in the world. This trait is well known to travellers, and we found it no
+traveller's tale. On first arriving at Samarra, we halted in the
+rest-house on the right bank of the river, and were enjoying our frugal
+meal of bread and dates when a sergeant came to us from the Governor
+with orders that we were to be instantly conveyed to his residence,
+which is situated in the town across the river. We demurred, and our own
+sergeant protested, but the Governor's emissary had definite orders, and
+we were hurried down in the twilight. Here we found that there was no
+boat to take us across. The Samarra sergeant shouted to a boatful of
+Arabs, floating down the river, but they would not stop. Louder and
+louder he shouted, till his voice cracked in a scream. Growing frantic
+with rage, he fired his revolver at the Arabs. Of course he missed them,
+but the bullets, ricochetting in the water, probably found a billet in
+the town beyond. The Arab occupants merely laughed in their beards. We
+also laughed. Then the sergeant declared that we would have to swim, and
+we urged him in pantomime to show the way.
+
+Eventually he spied a horse-barge down river, with a naked boy playing
+beside it. Reloading his revolver, a few shots in his direction
+attracted the lad's attention. Then an old man came out of a hut by some
+melon beds, to see who was firing at his son.
+
+Another shot or two and the old man and the boy were prevailed upon to
+take us across. We had secured our transport at last, and the whole
+transaction seemed (in Samarra) as simple as hailing a taxi.
+
+I bought a melon from the boy, and he snatched my money contemptuously.
+To take things without violence is a sign of weakness in Samarra. I
+noticed afterwards that all the boys and girls in this happy spot were
+fighting each other or engaged in killing something. And their elders
+keep something of the feckless violence of youth. I do not think that
+there are any good Samarratans.
+
+After the interview with the Governor already mentioned, which ended by
+a refusal on our part to speak with him further, we were sent to pass
+the night in a filthy hovel, whose only furniture consisted of a bench
+and a chair. Our sergeant was sitting on this chair when an officer
+rushed in and jerked it from under him, leaving him on the floor. As a
+conjuring trick it was neat, but as manners, deplorable. We were glad to
+get away from the place.
+
+Very few incidents came to diversify the monotony of our desert travel.
+One day, however, we met some Turkish cavalry going down to the siege of
+Kut. They were a fine body of troops, a little under-mounted perhaps,
+but thoroughly business-like. Their officers were most chivalrous
+cavaliers. Here in the desert, where luxuries were not to be had for
+money or for murder, they frequently gave us a handful of cigarettes, or
+a parcel of raisins, or else halted their squadron and asked us to share
+their meal. With these men one felt at ease. They were soldiers like
+ourselves. They did not ask awkward questions, and were told no lies. I
+remember especially one afternoon in the Marble Hills when we sat in a
+ring drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, with the panorama of the
+desert spread out before us, from the southward plains of Arabia to the
+hills of the devil-worshippers, misty and mysterious, in the north. We
+talked about horses all the time. A modern Isaiah delivered himself of
+the following sentiment, in which I heartily concur:
+
+"Where there is no racing the people perish."
+
+The first-line Turk has many fine qualities, of which generosity and
+gallantry are not the least. Something in Anglo-Saxon blood is in
+sympathy with the adventure-loving, flower-loving Turk. But, alas! there
+is another type of Ottoman, with the taint of Tamerlane. "When he is
+good he is very very good, but when he is bad he is horrid."
+
+In the latter category I must regretfully place the sergeant who
+commanded our escort. He came of decent stock (to judge by his charming
+sisters, and his own appearance indeed) but his mind was all mud and
+blood. He had been Hunified. Turkey would always be fighting, he said.
+The English were almost defeated. The Armenians were almost
+exterminated. But the Greeks remained to be dealt with, and the cursed
+Arabs. Finally the Germans themselves. In an apotheosis of Prussianism
+Turkey was to turn on her Allies and drive them out. Such was his creed.
+But a glow of courage lit the dark places of his mind. He loved fighting
+for the sheer fun of the thing. A few days beyond Samarra we were
+attacked by some wandering Arabs, who swept down on us in a crescent.
+Our guards panicked, but he stood his ground, and, seizing a rifle,
+dispersed the enemy by some well-directed shots. Whether we were near
+deliverance or death on that occasion I do not know, but that the panic
+amongst our escort was not wholly unreasonable was evinced by the fact
+that only a few hours earlier we had passed the headless trunk of a
+gendarme, strapped upon a donkey. He had been decapitated as a warning
+to the Samarratans that two can play at the game of savagery.
+
+The sight of the corpse had unnerved our guard, and as for myself, I did
+not know whether to be glad or sorry when the Arabs attacked us. To be
+taken by them meant either going back to the English or to the dust from
+which we came. The alternative was too heroic to be agreeable.
+Contrariwise, I was much disappointed when our sergeant finally drove
+them off. That evening, as if to point the moral, we found the body of
+another gendarme, also murdered, lying on a dung-heap outside the
+rest-house. This was at Shergat, the former capital of the Assyrians,
+and now a squalid village, where, however, the widows of Ashur were
+still "loud in their wail."
+
+Here we dined with the fattest man I have ever seen. He was really a pig
+personified, but as we both gobbled out of the same dish and ate the
+same salt, I will not further enlarge on his appearance.
+
+In the upper reaches of the Tigris there are wild geese so tame that
+they come waddling up to inspect the rare travellers through their land.
+I thought it might be possible to catch one of these animals on foot.
+Coquettishly enough they kept a certain distance. "We don't mind your
+looking at us," they seemed to say, "but we _do_ object to being pawed
+about." With the coming of the railway I am afraid a gun will destroy
+their belief in human kind.
+
+The geese appeared to enjoy the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, which
+prevails in these regions. The whole country is rich in natural oils and
+bitumen. One day it will make somebody's fortune, no doubt, and then the
+geese will waddle away from perspiring prospectors. . . .
+
+Before we arrived at Mosul we stopped for a bath at the hot springs of
+Hammam-Ali, where we met (in the water) a patriarch with a white beard,
+who confidently assured us that he was a hundred years old and would
+continue to live for another hundred, such were the beneficent
+properties of the water. Before his days are numbered he may live to see
+a Hydro at Hammam-Ali--poor old patriarch. He told us a lot about Jonah
+(whose tomb is at Nineveh, just opposite Mosul, on the other side of the
+river), and I am not sure that he did not claim acquaintance with that
+patriarch. He was quite one of the family.
+
+Mosul, he told us, was a heaven on earth, a land flowing with milk and
+honey, where we should ride all day on the best horses of Arabia, and
+feast all night in gardens such as the blessed _houris_ might adorn.
+
+It was with a certain elation, therefore, that I saw the distant
+prospect of Mosul next morning, set in its surrounding hills. A fair
+city it seemed, white and cool, with orange groves down to the river and
+many date-trees. But a closer acquaintance brought cruel disappointment,
+as generally happens in the East. The blight of the Ottoman was
+everywhere; there was dirt, decrepitude, and decay in every corner.
+Children with eye-disease, and adults with leprosies more terrible than
+Naaman's jostled each other in the mean streets. Whole quarters of the
+city had given up the ghost, and become refuse heaps, where curs grouted
+amongst offal. Mosul, like our escort-sergeant's mind, seemed a muddle
+of mud and blood.
+
+With sinking hearts we drove to the barracks, and were shown into a
+dark, gloomy office, where our names were taken. Thence we were led to a
+still murkier and more mouldering room, inhabited--nay, infested--by
+some ten Arabs. Through this we passed into a cell with windows boarded
+up, which was, if possible even damper, darker, and more dismal than
+anything we had yet seen. After the sunlight and great winds of the
+desert we stood bewildered. Death seemed in the air.
+
+Then out of the gloom there rose two figures. They were British
+officers, who had been captured about a month previously. So changed and
+wasted were they that even after we had removed the boards from the
+little window we could hardly recognise them. One of these officers was
+so ill with dysentery that he could hardly move, the other had high
+fever.
+
+Our arrival, with news from the outer world, bad though it was,
+naturally cheered them considerably, for nothing could be worse than
+their present plight.
+
+The ensuing days called for a great moral effort on our part. It was
+absolutely imperative to laugh, otherwise our surroundings would have
+closed in on us. . . . We cut up lids of cigarette boxes for playing
+cards. We inked out a chessboard on a plank. We held a spiritualistic
+seance with a soup-bowl, there being no table available to turn. We told
+interminable stories. We composed monstrous limericks; and we sang in
+rivalry with the Arab guard outside, who made day hideous with their
+melody and murdered sleep by snoring.
+
+But when there is little to eat and nothing to do, time drags heavily.
+Two cells with low ceilings that leaked were allotted to the four of us.
+In these we lived and ate and slept, except for fortnightly excursions
+to the baths. We were allowed no communication with the men, who lived
+in a dungeon below. Their fate was a sealed book to us. We had nothing
+to read. Under these conditions one begins to fear one's brain,
+especially at night. It was then that it began to run like a mechanical
+toy. Like a clockwork mouse, it scampered aimlessly amongst the dust of
+memory, then suddenly became inert, with the works run down. I grew
+terrified of thinking, especially of thinking about my friend in the fur
+coat.
+
+The night hours are the worst in captivity. One lies on the floor,
+waiting for sleep to come, but instead of blessed sleep, "beloved from
+pole to pole," thoughts come crowding thick and fast on consciousness,
+thoughts like clouds that lower over the quiescent body. Each second
+then seems of inconceivable duration. But there is no escape from Time.
+
+During the day, however, things were more bearable, and occasional
+gleams of humour enlivened the laggard moments.
+
+Among our guard there were several sentries who (I thought) might
+conceivably help us to escape. One dark night, one of these men
+whispered the one word "Jesus," and made the sign of the Cross, as I
+passed him. After this introduction I naturally hoped that he might be
+of use. He was a fine figure of a man, with a proud poise of head, and
+aquiline nose, as if some Assyrian god had been his ancestor. I was
+gazing at him in admiration the next day, and gauging his possibilities
+through my single eye-glass, when a curious thing happened.
+
+Our eyes met. He seemed mesmerised by my monocle. For a long time we
+stared at each other in silence, then, thinking the sergeant of the
+guard would notice our behaviour, I discreetly dropped my eye-glass and
+looked the other way. The sentry's mouth quivered as if I had made a
+joke, but instead of smiling, he burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
+The sergeant of the guard (a swart, sturdy little Turk) rushed out to
+see what had happened. There was the big sentry, wailing, and actually
+gnashing his white teeth. I stood awkwardly, looking as innocent as I
+felt. The sergeant bristled like a terrier, pulled the sentry's poor
+nose, and boxed his beautiful ears, while the victim continued to
+blubber and look piteously in my direction.
+
+But I could not help him at all. I had not the slightest idea what was
+the matter, nor do I know now. Hysteria, I suppose.
+
+Eventually that great solvent of perplexity, nicotine, came to relieve
+the awkward situation. First the sergeant accepted a cigarette, then,
+more diffidently, the sentry. Later I put in my eye-glass again, and
+convinced them, I think, that its use did not involve the weaving of any
+unholy spell.
+
+This eye-glass, by the way, survived all the fortunes of captivity.
+Through it I surveyed the moon-lit plains beyond the Tigris when I
+planned escape in Mosul, as shall be told in the next chapter. Later it
+scanned the desert's dusty face for any hope of release. At
+Afion-kara-hissar it helped me search for a pathway through our guards.
+At Constantinople it was still my friend. Through it, a month before
+escape, I looked at the slip of new moon that swung over San Sophia on
+the last day of Ramazan, wondering where the next moon would find me.
+And when the next moon came, I watched the sentries by its aid, on the
+night of our first escape. And it was in my eye when I slipped down the
+rope to freedom.
+
+But this chapter is getting "gaga." It has a happy ending, however.
+
+One evening when the
+
+  ". . . little patch of blue,
+   That prisoners call the sky"
+
+had turned to sulky mauve, and the air was heavy with storm, and our
+fellow-prisoners were depressed, and the Arab guard was bellowing songs
+outside, and we were peeling potatoes for our dinner by the flicker of
+lamp-light, and life seemed drab beyond description, there came great
+news to us. Two other officers had arrived.
+
+Next moment they peered into our den, even as we had done. And they were
+angry, amazed, unshaven, bronzed by the desert air, even as we had been.
+There in the doorway, ruddy and fair and truculent like some Viking out
+of time and place, stood the young pilot I had last seen at Aziziah. He
+was alive, my friend in the fur coat.
+
+The desert had delivered up its dead!
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THE TERRIBLE TURK
+
+
+One draws a long breath thinking of those days of Mosul. But bad as our
+case was, it was as nothing compared with that of the men.
+
+Some two hundred of them lived in a cellar below our quarters, through
+scenes of misery, and in an atmosphere of death which no one can
+conceive who does not know the methods of the Turk. Even to me, as I
+write in England, that Mosul prison begins to seem inconceivable.
+Huddled together on the damp flag-stones of the cellar, our men died at
+the rate of four or five a week. Although the majority were suffering
+from dysentery they not only could not secure medical attention, but
+were not even allowed out of their cells for any purpose whatever. Their
+pitiable state can be better imagined than described. Many went mad
+under our eyes. Deprived of food, light, exercise, and sometimes even
+drinking water, the condition of our sick and starving men was literally
+too terrible for words.
+
+It is useless, however, to pile horror on horror. Sixty per cent. of
+these men are dead, and this fact speaks for itself. No re-statement
+can strengthen, and no excuse can palliate, the case against the Turks.
+Our men in this particular instance were killed by the cynical brutality
+of Abdul Ghani Bey, the commandant of Mosul, and his acquiescent staff.
+
+There is an idea that "the Turks treated their own soldiers no better
+than our prisoners"; but this is a fallacy--at any rate with regard to
+hell-hounds such as Abdul Ghani Bey. He took an especial pleasure in
+inflicting the torments of thirst, hunger, and dirt upon the miserable
+beings under his care. Animals, in another country, would have been kept
+cleaner and better fed.
+
+Never shall I forget the arrival in January 1915 of a party of English
+prisoners from Baghdad. About two hundred and fifty men, who had been
+captured on barges just before the siege of Kut, had been taken first to
+Baghdad and thence by forced marches to Kirkuk, a mountain town on the
+borders of the Turko-Persian frontier. Why they were ever sent to Kirkuk
+I do not know, unless indeed it was thought that the sight of prisoners
+suitably starved would re-assure the population regarding the qualities
+of the redoubtable English soldier. After being exhibited to the
+population of Kirkuk our men continued their journey, through the bitter
+cold of the mountains, barefoot and in rags, arriving at last at Mosul
+shortly after the New Year. Only eighty men then remained out of the
+original two hundred and fifty, but although their numbers had dwindled
+their courage had not diminished.
+
+First there marched into our barrack square some sixty of our soldiers
+in column of route. They were erect and correct as if they were marching
+to a king's parade. Surely so strange a column will never be seen again.
+All were sick, and the most were sick to death. Some were barefoot, some
+had marched two hundred miles in carpet slippers, some were in
+shirt-sleeves, and all were in rags; one man only wore a great-coat, and
+he possessed no stitch of clothing beneath it. But through all adversity
+they held their heads high among the heathen, and carried themselves
+with the courage of a day "that knows not death." Silently they filed
+into the already crowded cellar, out of our sight, and many never issued
+again into the light of the sun.
+
+After these sixty men had disappeared the stragglers began to stagger
+in. One man, delirious, led a donkey on which the dead body of his
+friend was tied face downwards. After unstrapping the corpse he fell in
+a heap beside it. Dysentery cases wandered in and collapsed in groups on
+the parade ground. An Indian soldier, who had contracted lockjaw, kept
+making piteous signs to his mouth, and looking up to the verandah, where
+we stood surrounded by guards. But no one came to relieve those
+sufferers, dying by inches under our eyes.
+
+That night we managed, by bribing the guards, to have smuggled upstairs
+to us at tea-time two non-commissioned officers from among the new
+arrivals. Needless to say, we spent all our money (which was little
+enough in all conscience) in providing as good a fare as possible, and
+our famished guests devoured the honey and clotted cream we had to
+offer. Then one of them suddenly fainted. When he had somewhat recovered
+he had to be secretly conveyed below, and that was the end of the
+party--the saddest at which I have ever assisted. The officer who
+carried the sick man down spent several hours afterwards in removing
+vermin from his own clothes, for lice leave the moribund, and this poor
+boy died within a few days.
+
+Sometimes, when our pay was given us, or there occurred an opportunity
+to bribe our guard, it was our heart-breaking duty to decide which of
+the men we should attempt to save, by smuggling money to them out of the
+slender funds at our disposal, and which of their number, from cruel
+necessity, were too near their end to warrant an attempt to save.
+
+Something of the iron of Cromwell enters one's mind as one writes of
+these things. If we forget our dead, the East will not forget our shame.
+Sentiment must not interfere with justice. Abdul Ghani Bey, who shed our
+prisoners' blood, must pay the penalty. He is the embodiment of a
+certain type--perhaps not a very common type--of Turk, but common or
+not, he is one of the men responsible for the terrible death-rate among
+our soldiers. A short description of him, therefore, will not be out of
+place.
+
+He was a small man, this tiny Tamerlane, with a limp, and a scowl, and
+bandy legs. His sombre, wizened face seemed to light with pleasure at
+scenes of cruelty and despair. He insulted the old, and struck the weak,
+and delighted in the tears of women and the cries of children. This is
+not hyperbole. I have seen him stump through a crowd of Armenian widows
+and their offspring, and after striking some with his whip, he pushed
+down a woman into the gutter who held a baby at her breast. I have seen
+him pass down the ranks of Arab deserters, lashing one in the face,
+kicking another, and knocking down a third. I have seen him wipe his
+boots on the beard of an old Arab he had felled, and spur him in the
+face. I hope he has already been hanged, because only the hangman's cord
+could remove his atavistic cruelty.
+
+His subordinates went in deadly fear of him, and while it was extremely
+difficult to help our men, it was practically impossible to help
+ourselves at all in the matter of escape. Yet escape was doubly urgent
+now, to bring news of our condition to the outer world.
+
+After much thought I decided that a certain wall-eyed interpreter who
+came occasionally to buy us food was the most promising person to
+approach. My friend and I laid our plans carefully. After a judicious
+tip, and some hints as to our great importance in our own country, we
+evinced a desire to have private lessons with him in Arabic, enlarging
+at the same time upon the great career that a person like himself might
+have had, had he been serving the English and not the Turks. Gradually
+we led round to the subject of escape. At first we talked generalities
+in whispers, and he was distinctly shy of doing anything of which the
+dear commandant would not approve; but eventually, softly and
+distinctly, and with a confidence that I did not feel, I made a
+momentous proposal to him, nothing less than that he could help us to
+escape. He winced as if my remark was hardly proper, and fixed me with a
+single, thunder-struck eye. Then he quavered:
+
+"This is very sudden!"
+
+We could not help laughing.
+
+"This is no jesting matter," he said. "I will be killed if I am caught."
+
+"But you won't get caught. With the best horses in Arabia and a guide
+like you. . . ."
+
+"Hush, hush! I must think it over."
+
+For several days he preserved a tantalising silence, alternately raising
+our hopes by a wink from his wonderful eye, and then dashing them to the
+ground by a blank stare.
+
+We lived in a torment of hope deferred.
+
+But time passed more easily now. The nights took on a new complexion,
+flushed by the hope of freedom. From our little window I could see
+across a courtyard to a patch of river. Beyond it, immense and magical
+under the starlight, were the ruins of former civilisation--the mounds
+of Nineveh, the tomb of Jonah, and the rolling downs that lead to the
+mountains of Kurdistan. To those mountains my fancy went. If sleep did
+not come, then there were enthralling adventures to be lived in those
+mountains, adventures of the texture of dreams, yet tinged with a
+certain prospective of reality. . . . We had bought revolvers, our
+horses were ready, we had bribed our guard. We rode far and fast, with
+our wall-eyed friend as guide. By evening we were in a great
+forest. . . .
+
+But reality proved a poor attendant on romance. A sordid question of
+money was our stumbling-block, and a high enterprise was crippled--not
+for the first or last time--by want of cash. We had already given the
+interpreter five pounds (which represented so much bread taken out of
+our mouths), but now he stated that further funds were indispensable to
+arrange preliminaries. This seemed reasonable, for arms and horses could
+not be secured on credit in Mosul. Unfortunately, however, funds were
+not available. We could not, in decency, borrow from other prisoners to
+help us in our escape. At this juncture our guide, philosopher, and
+friend lost--or embezzled--a five-pound note that had been entrusted to
+him by another prisoner to buy us food. Whether he lost it carelessly or
+criminally I am not prepared to state, but the fact remains he lost it.
+Our fellow-prisoner very naturally complained to the Turks, as the
+absence of this five pounds meant we could buy no food for a week.
+
+The Turks arrested the interpreter. He grew frightened, invented a story
+about the complainant having asked him to help in an escape, then
+recanted, vacillated, contradicted himself, and got himself bastinadoed
+for his pains.
+
+The bastinado, I may as well here explain, is administered as follows:
+the feet of the victim are bared, and his ankles are strapped to a pole.
+The pole is now raised by two men to the height of their shoulders. A
+third man takes a thick stick about the diameter of a man's wrist, and
+strikes him on the soles of the feet. Between twenty and a hundred
+strokes are administered, while the victim writhes until he faints. No
+undue exertion is necessary on the part of the executioner, for even
+after a gentle bastinado a man is not expected to be able to walk for
+several days.
+
+The wall-eyed interpreter was brought limping to our cell about three
+days after his punishment. He was brought by Turkish officers, who
+wished to hear from our own lips a denial of his story that we had been
+plotting an escape.
+
+It was a dramatic, and for me rather dreadful, moment. Indignantly and
+vehemently we denied ever having asked his help. Only myself and
+another, besides the interpreter, knew the truth. To the other officers
+at Mosul (there were nine of us then, sharing two little cells) this
+black business is only now for the first time made known. Their
+indignation, therefore, was by no means counterfeit.
+
+"The man must be mad. No one ever dreamed of escaping," I stated,
+looking fixedly into the interpreter's one eye, which, while it implored
+me to tell the truth, seemed to hold a certain awe for a liar greater
+than himself.
+
+"But----" he stammered, cowed by the circumstance that for once in his
+life he was telling the truth.
+
+"But what?" we demanded angrily. "Let the villain speak out. His story
+is monstrous."
+
+"Besides, we are so comfortable here," I added parenthetically.
+
+Eventually the wretched man was led gibbering to an underground dungeon.
+What happened to him afterwards I do not know. I publish this story
+after careful thought, because, if he was "playing the game" by us, why
+did he talk to the Turks about escape? If, on the other hand, he was a
+prison spy, then his punishment is not my affair.
+
+The treachery of the interpreter was an ill wind for everyone, for our
+guards were sent away to the front (which is tantamount to a sentence of
+death) and the vigilance of our new guards was greater than that of the
+old. Intrigue was dead and our isolation complete.
+
+In these circumstances it may be imagined with what excitement I
+received the news that the German Consul wanted to see me in the
+commandant's office. It was the first time for a fortnight that I had
+left my cell.
+
+I entered slowly, and after saluting the company present, first
+generally, and then individually, I took a dignified seat after the
+manner of the country. Ranged round the room were various notables of
+Mosul--doctors, apothecaries, priests, and lawyers. On a dais slightly
+above us sat the Consul and the commandant. For some time we kept
+silence, as if to mark the importance of the occasion. Then a cigarette
+was offered me by the commandant. I refused this offering, rising in my
+chair and saluting him again.
+
+At last the German Consul spoke.
+
+He had been instructed by telegraph, he told me, to pay me the sum of
+five hundred marks in gold. The money came from a friend of my father's.
+I begged him to thank the generous donor, and a whole vista of
+possibilities immediately rose to my mind.
+
+The money would be given me next day, the Consul continued, and a
+_kavass_ of the Imperial Government would go with me into the _bazaar_
+to make any purchases I required.
+
+This conversation took place in French, a language of which the
+commandant was quite ignorant, and I saw that here was an ideal
+opportunity for bringing the plight of our prisoners to light. But the
+Consul, I gathered, wanted to keep on friendly terms with the Turks.
+Some of the things I told him, however, made him open his eyes, and may
+have made his kultured flesh creep.
+
+"I will come again to-morrow," he said hurriedly--"you can tell me more
+then."
+
+After this he spoke in Turkish at some length to the commandant, while
+the latter interjected that wonderful word _yok_ at intervals.
+
+_Yok_, I must explain, signifies "No" in its every variation, and is
+probably the most popular word in Turkish. It is crystallised
+inhibition, the negation of all energy and enthusiasm, the motto of the
+Ottoman Dilly and Dallys. Its only rival in the vocabulary is _yarin_,
+which means "to-morrow."
+
+"Yok, yok, yok," said the commandant, and I gathered that he was
+displeased.
+
+That night I made my plans, and when summoned to the office next day I
+was armed with three documents. The first was a private letter of thanks
+to Baron Mumm for his generous and kindly loan. The second was a
+suggestion that the International Red Cross should immediately send out
+a commission to look after our prisoners at Mosul. And the third was a
+detailed list of articles required by our men, with appropriate
+comments. Items such as this figured on the list:
+
+Soap, for two hundred men, as they had been unable to wash for months.
+
+Kerosene tins, to hold drinking-water, which was denied to our
+prisoners.
+
+Blankets, as over 50 per cent. had no covering at all.
+
+These screeds startled the company greatly. The Consul stared and the
+commandant glared, for the one hated fuss and the other hated me. I was
+delightfully unpopular, but when an Ambassador telegraphs in Turkey, the
+provinces lend a respectful ear. My voice, crying in the wilderness,
+must needs be heard.
+
+Summoning an interpreter, the commandant demanded whether I had any
+cause for complaint; whereupon the following curious three-cornered
+conversation took place--so far as I could understand the Turkish part:
+
+"The men must be moved to better quarters," said I. "Until this is
+arranged nothing can be done."
+
+"He says nothing can be done," echoed the interpreter.
+
+"Then of what does he complain?" asked the commandant.
+
+"The very beasts in my country are better cared for," I said. "Our men
+are dying of hunger and cold."
+
+"He says the men are dying of cold," said the interpreter, shivering at
+his temerity in mentioning the matter.
+
+"The weather is not my fault," grumbled the commandant, "perhaps it will
+be better to-morrow. Yes, _yarin_."
+
+And so on. Talk was hopeless, but before leaving I gave the German
+Consul to understand that he now shared with Abdul Ghani Bey the
+responsibility for our treatment. To his credit, be it said, the
+commandant was removed shortly after our departure.
+
+Two days after this interview we were moved from Mosul, where our
+presence was becoming irksome no doubt. Before leaving I left all my
+fortunate money, except five pounds, with the Consul, asking him to form
+a fund (which I hoped would be supplemented later by the Red Cross) for
+sick prisoners. Twelve months later this money was returned to me in
+full, but I fancy that it had done its work in the meanwhile.
+
+On the day before our journey I went shopping with the Imperial _kavass_
+aforesaid, and it was a most pompous and pleasant excursion. Although I
+wore sandshoes and tattered garments, what with my eyeglass, and the
+gorgeous German individual, dressed like a Bond Street _commissionaire_,
+who carried my parcels and did my bargaining, I think we made a great
+impression upon the good burgesses of Mosul.
+
+We threaded our way among Kurds with seven pistols at their belts, and
+Arabs hung with bandoliers, and astonishing Circassians with whiskers
+and swords. Almost every male swaggered about heavily armed, but a blow
+on their bristling midriff would have staggered any one of them. Their
+bark, I should think, is worse than their bite.
+
+After a Turkish bath, where I graciously entertained the company with
+coffee, we strolled round the transport square, where we chaffered
+hotly for carriages to take us to Aleppo.
+
+The material results of the morning were:
+
+Some food and tobacco for the men staying behind.
+
+Rations for ourselves, consisting of an amorphous mass of dates,
+cigarettes, conical loaves of sugar, candles, and a heap of unleavened
+bread.
+
+Carriages for our conveyance to Aleppo.
+
+But the moral effect of our excursion was greater far. I sowed broadcast
+the seeds of disaffection to Abdul Ghani Bey. To the tobacconist I said
+that the English, Germans, Turks, and all the nations of the earth,
+while differing in other matters, had agreed he was a worm to be crushed
+under the heel of civilisation. To the grocer I repeated the story. To
+the fruiterer I said his doom was nigh, and to the baker and candlestick
+maker that his hour had come.
+
+Everyone agreed. _Conspuez le commandant_ was the general opinion.
+
+"In good old Abdul Hamid's days," they said, "such devil's spawn would
+not have been allowed to live."
+
+It was a matter of minutes before rumours of his downfall were rife
+throughout the city.
+
+Next day he came to see us off, bow-legs, whip, and scowl and all. He
+stood stockily, watching us drive away, and then turned and spat. But
+the taste of us was not to be thus easily dispelled. He will remember
+us, I hope, to his dying day. May that day be soon!
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  "OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION. . . ."
+
+
+We had left a sad party of prisoners behind us, alas! but we had done
+what little we could for them. Confined as we had been, their sufferings
+had only added to our own. The best hope for them lay in the German
+Consul. He could do more, if he wished, than we could have achieved for
+all our wishes. Nothing could have been more hopeless than our position
+at Mosul. But now at least there was the open road before us, and hope,
+and health.
+
+The desert air is magnificent. The untamed winds seemed to blow through
+every fibre of one's being, and clear away the cobwebs of captivity. The
+swinging sun, the great spaces of sand, the continuous exercise, and the
+lean diet of dates and bread, produce a feeling of perfect health.
+Indeed, after a day or two I began to feel much too well to be a
+prisoner. Under the desert stars one thought of the lights of London.
+Perversely, instead of being grateful for the unfettered grandeur of
+one's surroundings, one thought regretfully of the crowded hours one
+spends among civilised peoples. And, oh, how tired I was of seeing
+nothing but men! One of the worst features of captivity is that it is
+generally a story without a heroine.
+
+After the second day of travel I was really seriously in need of a
+heroine, for my friend had developed high fever. If only there had been
+a ministering angel among our party! I did my best, but am not a nurse
+by nature. My friend grew so weak that he could not stand; and I began
+to doubt whether he would get to our journey's end.
+
+But although no heroine came to our help, a hero did. As he happens to
+be a Turk, I will describe him shortly. Let us call him the Boy Scout,
+for he did (not one, but many) good actions every day. Out of his valise
+he produced a phial of brandy, tea, sugar, raisins, and some invaluable
+medicines. All these he pressed us to accept. He even tried to make me
+believe that he could spare a box of Bir-inji (first-class) cigarettes,
+until I discovered he had no more for himself. At every halting place he
+went to search for milk for my friend. Until we had been provided for,
+he never attended to his own comforts. After eighty miles of travelling
+everyone is tired, but although the Boy Scout must have been as tired as
+any of us, for he rode instead of driving, and although he had no
+official position with regard to us, no brother officer could have been
+more helpful or more truly kind. From the moment of our meeting we had
+been attracted by each other. At times, a look or an inflection of voice
+will proclaim a kindred spirit in a perfect stranger. Something happens
+above our consciousness; soul speaks to soul perhaps. So it was with the
+Boy Scout. He was unknown to me when I first saw him, dark-eyed and
+graceful, riding a white horse like a prince in a fairy book, and we
+spoke no common language, but somehow we understood each other.
+
+He was a high official, I afterwards heard, travelling incognito, and
+had been engaged on Intelligence work for his country in Afghanistan.
+But, although an enemy in theory, he was a friend in fact. The war was
+far. Here in the desert we met as brothers. A finer figure of a man I
+have rarely seen, nor a truer gentleman. He was an ardent Young Turk,
+and if other Young Turks were cast in such a mould, there would be a
+place in the world for the race of Othman. But I have never seen another
+like him.
+
+His manners were perfect, and although we discussed every subject under
+the sun in snatches of French and broken bits of Persian, we always
+managed to avoid awkward topics such as atrocities, reprisals, and the
+like. He guessed, I think, that I often thought of escape, and said one
+day:
+
+"I shall fully understand if you try to get away, but you will forgive
+me, won't you, if I use my revolver?"
+
+I assured him I would.
+
+"Good!" he laughed, "because I am a dead shot!"
+
+One day we must meet again, and pick up the threads of talk.
+
+At Ress-el-Ain we separated for a time, and my friend was carried into
+the train, where he lay down and took no further interest in the
+proceedings. I also lay down, exhausted by anxiety. I was glad to be
+quit of the desert. Under other conditions it might have been charming,
+but its glamour is invisible to a captive's eyes.
+
+The train journey was not very interesting, except for the fact that our
+guard commander (excited perhaps by the approach to civilisation, or
+else because he was free from the restraining influence of our teetotal
+Boy Scout) purchased a bottle of _'araq_ and imbibed it steadily on the
+journey between Ress-el-Ain and Djerablisse.
+
+_'Araq_, the reader must know, is otherwise known as _mastic_ or
+_douzico_, and is a colourless alcohol distilled from raisins and
+flavoured with aniseed, which clouds on admixture with water, and tastes
+like cough-mixture. It is an intoxicant without the saving grace of more
+generous vintages. It inebriates but does not cheer.
+
+At Djerablisse, on the Euphrates, our guard commander supplemented the
+fiery _'araq_ with some equally potent German ration rum. By the time we
+got to Aleppo next day, he was reeking of this blend of alcohols. Not
+all the perfumes of Arabia could have stifled its fumes, nor all the
+waters of Damascus have quenched his thirst. He was besotted.
+
+Escape would have been possible then. We had become separated from the
+rest of our party and were in charge of one old, sleepy, and rather
+friendly soldier. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind as to where
+we should pass the night, but we eventually arrived at a small and clean
+Turkish hotel, where we were told, rather mysteriously, that we should
+be among friends.
+
+I looked for friends, but as everyone was asleep, it being then two
+o'clock in the morning, I decided to have a good night's rest before
+making any plans. Our dainty bedroom was too tempting to be ignored. The
+curtains were of Aleppo-work, in broad stripes of black and gold. The
+rafters were striped in black and white. The walls were dead white, the
+furniture dead black. Three pillows adorned our beds, of black, and of
+crimson, and of brilliant blue, each with a white slip covering half
+their length. The bed-covers were black, worked with gold dragons. It
+was like a room one imagines in dreams, or sees at the Russian Ballet.
+
+After a blissful night, between sheets, and on a spring mattress, tea
+was brought to us in bed, and immediately afterwards, as no guards
+seemed to be about, I rose, greatly refreshed, and dressed in haste. My
+idea was to order a carriage to drive us to the sea-coast at Mersina,
+from which place I felt sure it would be possible to charter a boat to
+Cyprus.
+
+But these hasty plans were dispelled by finding the Boy Scout waiting
+for me in the passage.
+
+"Your guard commander was ill," he explained, "so I arranged that you
+should be brought to this hotel, where you are my guests. And I want you
+to lunch with me at one o'clock."
+
+My face fell, but of course there was no help for it. And the Boy
+Scout's hospitality was princely indeed.
+
+After delicious hors-d'oeuvres (the _meze_--as it is called in
+Turkey--is a national dish) and soup, and savoury meats, we refreshed
+our palates with bowls of curds and rice. Then we attacked the sweets,
+which were melting morsels of honey and the lightest pastry. After
+drinking the health of the invalid (who could not join us of course) in
+Cyprian wine, we adjourned to the Boy Scout's room for coffee and
+cigarettes. Here I found all his belongings spread out, including
+several tins of English bully-beef and slabs of chocolate, which he said
+was his share of the loot taken after our retirement at the Dardanelles.
+He begged us to help ourselves to everything we wanted in the way of
+food or clothing; and he was ready, literally, to give us his last
+shirt. After having fitted us out, he telephoned to the hospital about
+the patient, and made arrangements that he should be received that
+afternoon.
+
+Some hours later, accordingly, I drove to the hospital with my friend,
+accompanied by two policemen who had arrived from district headquarters,
+no doubt at the Boy Scout's request.
+
+We were met at the entrance of the hospital by two odd little doctors.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" squeaked Humpty in French.
+
+"Fever," said I.
+
+"Fever, indeed!" answered Dumpty, "let's look at his chest."
+
+"And at his back," added Humpty suspiciously.
+
+My friend disrobed, shivering in the sharp air, and these two strange
+physicians glared at him, standing two yards away, while the Turkish
+soldier and I supported the patient.
+
+"He hasn't got it," they said suddenly in chorus.
+
+"Hasn't what?"
+
+"Typhus, of course. Carry him in. He will be well in a week."
+
+I doubted it, but the situation did not admit of argument. We carried
+him in, through a crowd of miserable men in every stage of disease, all
+clamouring for admittance. No one, I gathered, was allowed into that
+hospital merely for the dull business of dying. They could do that as
+well outside. Thankful for small mercies, therefore, I left my friend in
+the clutches of Humpty and Dumpty, and even as they had predicted, he
+was well within a week.
+
+There is something rather marvellous about a Turkish doctor's diagnosis.
+Such trifles as the state of your temperature or tongue are not
+considered. They trust in the Lord and give you an emetic. Although
+unpleasant, their methods are often efficacious.
+
+It was now my turn to fall ill, and I did it with startling suddenness
+and completeness. I was sitting at the window of the house in which we
+were confined in Aleppo, feeling perfectly well, when I began to shiver
+violently. In half an hour I was in a high fever. That night I was taken
+to Humpty and Dumpty. Next morning I was unconscious.
+
+I will draw a veil over the next month of my life. Only two little
+incidents are worth recording.
+
+The first occurred about a week after my admittance to hospital, when my
+disease, whatever it was, had reached its crisis. A diet of emetics is
+tedious, so also is the companionship of people suffering from _delirium
+tremens_ when one wants to be quiet. An end, I felt, must be made of the
+present situation. Creeping painfully out of my bed, I went down the
+passage, holding against the wall for support. It was a dark, uneven
+passage, with two patches of moonlight from two windows at the far end.
+Near one of these pools of light I caught my foot in a stone, and
+slipped and fell. I was too weak to get up again. I cooled my head on
+the stones and wondered what would happen next. Then I began to think of
+seas and rivers. All the delightful things I had ever done in water kept
+flitting through my mind. I remembered crouching in the bow of my
+father's cat-boat as we beat up a reach to Salem (Massachusetts) with
+the spray in our faces. And I thought of the sparkling sapphire of the
+Mediterranean and the cool translucencies of Cuckoo-weir. . . . No one
+came to disturb my meditations. The moonlight shifted right across my
+body, and slowly, slowly, I felt the wells of consciousness were filling
+up again. I was, quite definitely, coming back to life. It was as if I
+had really been once more in America and Italy and by the Thames, living
+again in all memories connected with open waters, and as if their solace
+had somehow touched me. Their coolness had cured me, and I was now
+flying back through imperceptible ether to Aleppo. I was coming back to
+that passage in a Turkish hospital. . . .
+
+Did I draw, I wonder, upon some banked reserve of vitality, or were my
+impressions a common phase of illness? Anyway, when I came to, I was a
+different man. The waters of the world had cured me.
+
+Later, during the journey to Afion-kara-hissar, I had a relapse. This
+second incident of my illness was a spiritual experience. Having been
+carried by my friend to the railway station, I collapsed on the
+platform, while he was momentarily called away. So dazed and helpless
+was I that I lay inconspicuously on some sacks, a bundle of skin and
+bone that might not have been human at all. Some porters threw more
+sacks on the pile and I was soon almost covered. But I lay quite still:
+I was too tired to move or to cry out. As bodily weakness increased, so
+there came to me a sense of mental power, over and beyond my own poor
+endowments. I thrilled to this strange strength, which seemed to mount
+to the very throne of Time, where past and future are one. Call it a
+whimsy of delirium if you will, nevertheless, one of the scenes I saw in
+the cinema of clairvoyance was a scene that actually happened some three
+months later, at that same station where I lay. . . . I saw some hundred
+men, prisoners from Kut and mostly Indians, gathered on the platform.
+One of these men was sitting on this very heap of sacks; he was sitting
+there rocking himself to and fro in great agony, for one of the guards
+had struck him with a thick stick and broken his arm. But not only was
+his arm broken, the spirit within him (which I also saw) was shattered
+beyond repair. No hope in life remained: he had done that which is most
+terrible to a Hindu, for he had eaten the flesh of cows and broken the
+ordinances of caste. His companions had died in the desert without the
+lustral sacrifice of water or of fire, and he would soon die also, a
+body defiled, to be cast into outer darkness. For a time the terror and
+the tragedy of that alien brain was mine; I shared its doom and lived
+its death. Later I learnt that a party of men, coming out of the great
+tribulation of the desert, had halted at this station, and a Hindu
+soldier with a broken arm had died on those sacks. I record the incident
+for what it is worth.
+
+Without my friend I should never have achieved this journey. My
+gratitude is a private matter, though I state it here, with some mention
+of my own dull illness, in order to picture in a small way the
+sufferings of our men from Kut. When some were sick and others hale, the
+death-rate was not so high, but with many parties, such as those whose
+ghosts I believe I saw, there was no possibility of helping each other.
+So starved and so utterly weary were they, that they had no energy
+beyond their own existence. Many men must have died with no faith left
+in man or God.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+On arrival at Afion-kara-hissar, we were shown into a bare house. For a
+day I rested blissfully on the floor, asking for nothing better than to
+be allowed to lie still for ever and ever. But this was not to be. On
+the second day of our stay we noticed signs of great excitement among
+our guards. They nailed barbed wire round our windows, and they watched
+us anxiously through skylights, and counted us continually, as if
+uncertain whether two and two made four.
+
+Presently the meaning of their precautions was divulged. Some English
+prisoners had escaped, and our captors were engaged in locking the
+stable door after the steeds had gone. All the prisoners in
+Afion-kara-hissar were marshalled in the street, and marched off to the
+Armenian church, situated at the base of the big rock that dominates the
+town. Hither we also marched, with our new companions, singing the
+prisoners' anthem:
+
+  "We _won't_ be bothered about
+   Wherever we go, we always shout
+   We won't be bothered about. . . .
+   We're bothered if we'll be bothered about!"
+
+greatly to the astonishment of the townsfolk, who connected the Armenian
+church with massacres rather than melody. The leader of our band was a
+wounded officer, in pyjamas and a bowler hat (this being the sum of his
+possessions) who waved his crutch as a conductor's baton. (Alas! his
+cheery voice is stilled, for he died in hospital a year later. R.I.P.) I
+can still see him hobbling along--a tall figure in pink pyjamas, with
+one leg swinging (bandaged to the size of a bolster) and his hat askew,
+and his long chin stuck out defiantly--hymn-writer and hero
+_manque_--fit leader of lost causes and of our fantastic pageant to that
+church.
+
+It was a gay and motley crew of prisoners of all nationalities and
+conditions of life who entered its solemn and rather stuffy precincts.
+We were all delighted to be "str[-a]fed" in a worthy cause. Three good men
+had escaped, and more might follow later.
+
+To anyone in decent health the month we spent in the Armenian church
+must have been an interesting experience. Even to me, it was not without
+amusement. Imagine a plain, rather gloomy, church, built of oak and
+sandstone, with a marble chancel in the east. Two rooms opened out on
+either side of the altar, and there was a high gallery in the west. In
+the body of the building the English camped. One of the small rooms was
+taken by the French, the other we reserved for a chapel. The Russians
+chiefly inhabited the space between the chancel and the altar, but the
+overflow of nationalities mingled. Our soldier servants were put in the
+gallery. When everyone was fitted in, there was no space to move, except
+in the centre aisle. There was no place for exercise nor any
+arrangements for washing or cooking. During our stay in the church two
+men died of typhus, and it is extraordinary that the infection did not
+spread, considering the lack of sanitation. During the first night of
+the strafe, the Russians, accustomed to pogroms in their own country,
+thought there was a likelihood of being massacred, and kept watch
+through the small hours of the morning by clumping up and down the aisle
+in their heavy boots. All night long--for I was sleepless too--I watched
+these grave, bearded pessimists waiting for a death which did not come,
+while the French and English slept the sleep of optimists. At last dawn
+arrived, and lit the windows over the altar, and a few moments later the
+sunlight crept into the northern transept. Then the Russians gave up
+their vigil, dropped in their tracks, and at once began snoring in the
+aisle, like great watch-dogs.
+
+The noise the two hundred of us made in sleeping was remarkable.
+Probably our nerves were rather queer. The church was never silent
+through the night. Some cried out continually in their slumbers, others
+went through a pantomime of eating. Some moaned, others chuckled. One
+sleeper gave a hideous laugh at intervals. One could hear it deep down
+in his throat, and mark it gradually bubbling to his lips until he grew
+vocal like some horrible hyena. But it is small wonder that the
+prisoners in the church were restless. The marvel is that they slept at
+all. Nearly all of us had lived through trying moments, and had felt the
+hand of Providence, whose power makes one tremble. We knew the shivers
+of retrospection. One officer, for instance, wounded in an attack on
+Gallipoli, had been dragged as a supposed corpse to the Turkish trenches
+and there built into the parapet. But he was none the worse now for his
+amazing experiences, except that he suffered slightly from deafness, as
+his neck had formed the base of a loophole. Then there was a man, left
+as dead after an attack, who recovered consciousness but not the use of
+his limbs, and lay helpless in the path of the Turkish retreat. For an
+hour the passers-by prodded him with bayonets, so that he now has
+twenty-seven wounds and a large gap in his body where there should be
+solid flesh. From the very brink of the valley of the shadow this boy of
+nineteen had returned to life. Again, there was a young Frenchman, who
+lay four days and nights between the lines, dying of the twin tortures
+of thirst and a stomach wound; but by a miracle he survived, and now at
+night, sometimes, when will lost its grip on consciousness, he would
+live those ninety-six hours again. Then there were the submarine crews,
+out of the jaws of the worst death conceivable. One crew had lived for a
+whole day struggling in a net at the bottom of the Dardanelles while the
+air became foul and hope waned, and the submarine "sweated," and depth
+charges exploded so close to them that on one occasion the shock knocked
+a teapot off a table! Hemmed in and helpless, the clammy agony of that
+suspense might well haunt their sleeping hours.
+
+But on the whole our psychology was normal. Only, at nights, if one lay
+awake, did one realise the stress and stark horror through which the
+sleepers had lived. Out of four hundred officers "missing" at the
+Dardanelles, only some forty were surviving at Afion-kara-hissar. This
+fact speaks for itself.
+
+By day we wandered about, so far as the congestion permitted, making
+friends and exchanging experiences. To us, lately from Mesopotamia, the
+then unknown story of Gallipoli stirred our blood as it will stir the
+blood of later men.
+
+I ate and drank the anecdotes of Gallipoli as they were told me. I loved
+the hearing of them, in the various dialects of the protagonists, from a
+lordly lisp to a backwood burr. The brogue, the northern drawl, the
+London twang, the elided g's or the uncertain h's, had each their
+several and distinct fascination. There is joy in hearing one's own
+tongue again after a time of strange speech and foreign faces.
+
+  "Beyond our reason's sway,
+   Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
+   Yearns to its fellow-clay."
+
+The many voices of the many British were better than sweet music.
+
+But we had plenty of sweet music as well. The sailors amongst us were
+the cheeriest crew imaginable.
+
+A resume of our life at that time would be that we sang often about
+nothing in particular, swore continually at life in general, smoked
+heavily, gambled mildly, and drank _'araq_ when we could get it, and tea
+when we couldn't. Not everyone, I hasten to add, did all these things.
+As in everyday life, there were some who said that the constant
+cigarette was evil, and that cards were a curse, and drink the devil.
+But, again, as in everyday life, their example had no effect on cheerful
+sinners.
+
+  "Here's to the bold and gallant three
+   Who broke their bonds and sought the sea"
+
+sang one of the poets of our captivity, and all of us French, Russians,
+and English, took up the chorus with a roar. The Turkish sentries
+protested vainly, and some, ostentatiously loading their rifles, went up
+to the Western gallery which overlooked the body of the church. As we
+were being treated like Armenians, they could not understand why we did
+not behave like Armenians and herd silently together, as sheep before a
+storm. Instead, two hundred lusty voices proclaimed to anyone who cared
+to listen that we were not downhearted.
+
+See us then at midnight, seated at a table under the high altar. About
+fifty of us are celebrating somebody's birthday, and a demi-john of
+_'araq_ graces the festive board. We have sung every song we know, and
+many we don't.
+
+  "Jolly good song and jolly well sung,
+   Jolly good fellows every one. . . .
+                    Wow! Wow!"
+
+The chorus dies down, and the Master of the Ceremonies, still in pyjamas
+and bowler hat, rises on his sound leg and standing (swaying slightly)
+at the head of the table, raps on it with his crutch for silence.
+
+One officer wears a soup-bowl for a Hun helmet. Others are dressed as
+parodies of Turks, and have been acting in a farce entitled "The
+Escape." Two Irish friends of mine are singing "The Wearing of the
+Green," while others are patriotically drowning their voices. A
+submarine skipper, with a mane of yellow hair over his face, like a lion
+in a picture-book, watches a diplomat dancing a horn-pipe. A little bald
+flying man of gigantic strength and brain, is wrestling with a bearded
+Hercules. Some sailors are singing an old sea-chanty.
+
+The rough deal table, littered with pipes and glasses, the tallow-dips
+lighting the vaulted gloom, the bearded roysterers singing songs older
+than Elizabeth's time, the simple fare of bread and meat, the simpler
+jokes and horseplay, took one back through centuries to other men who
+made the best of war. In Falstaff's time such scenes as these must have
+passed in the taverns of Merrie England. Only here, there were no
+wenches to serve us with sack. We had to mix our own _'araq_.
+
+"Silence, if you please," says he of the long jowl, using his crutch as
+a chairman's hammer. "Silence for the prisoners' band."
+
+The band begins. It consists of penny whistles, banjos, castanets,
+soup-bowls, knives and forks, and anything else within reach. The
+_motif_ of the piece is our release. _Andante con coraggio_ we pass the
+weary months ahead. Then the dawn of our liberation breaks. We smash
+everything we possess, while the train to take us away steams into the
+station.
+
+Sh! Shh! Shhh! Chk! Chk! Chk! Bang! Swish!! We take our seats amid a
+perfect pandemonium. Then the train whistles--louder and louder--and we
+move off--faster and faster and faster and _faster_, until no one can
+make any more noise, and the dust of our stamping has risen like incense
+to the roof, in a grand finale of freedom.
+
+Strange doings in a church, you say? But what would you? We had nowhere
+else to go. There is a time for everything after all, and it is a poor
+heart that never rejoices. I feel sure Solomon himself would have sung
+with us, and proved most excellent company.
+
+On Sunday mornings Divine Service was always well attended. Perhaps by
+contrast with my usual methods of passing the time, those Sabbath hours
+are set as so many jewels in the tarnished shield of idleness. The
+fadeless beauty of our Common Prayer brought hope and consolation to all
+of us who were gathered together. We repeated the grand old words; we
+sang "Fight the Good Fight" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." We shared
+then, however humbly, in the tears and triumph of our cause. We were not
+of that white company that was to die for England, but we could share
+the sorrow of the women who mourned, and of the old who stood so sadly
+outside the fray.
+
+And as through a magic door, I passed from that barren room to a country
+church where the litany for all prisoners and captives went up to
+Heaven, mingled with the fragrance of English roses.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS
+
+
+Afion-kara-hissar means "Black Opium Rock" in Turkish, but it is not as
+interesting a place as it sounds. The only romantic visitors are the
+storks, who use it as an aerodrome on their bi-annual migrations. They
+blacken the sky when they come, in flights a thousand strong, swooping
+and circling over the plain and alighting finally near the black rocks
+that give the town its name. With one leg tucked up, and pensive beak
+back-turned, they form arresting silhouettes against the sunset. And
+curiously enough, the Turkish children know that they bring babies to
+the home.
+
+We lived in four cottages, connected by a common garden. They were quite
+new--so new that they had no windows or conveniences. We fitted frames
+and panes, we erected bathrooms, installed kitchen ranges, made beds out
+of planks and string, and tables out of packing-cases. We made
+everything, in fact, except the actual houses.
+
+I daresay that at this time we were better treated than the officer
+prisoners in Germany. Not so the men. We officers had plenty to eat,
+though it cost a great deal, but the men were always half starved when
+for any reason they could not supplement their ration from Ambassador's
+money, or private remittances from home. Every month the American (and
+later the Dutch) Embassy used to send a sum of money to our prisoners to
+help them buy something more nourishing than the black bread and soup
+provided by the Turks. When this relief did not arrive in time, or the
+Turks delayed in distributing it, our men suffered the greatest
+hardship. Treatment in Turkey was all a question of money. The officers
+could, and did, cash cheques while in captivity, and were able to pay
+for the necessities (and sometimes also the minor luxuries) of
+existence, but the men were entirely dependent on what was given them.
+Although some had bank balances, no one except an officer was allowed to
+write a cheque.
+
+Here it is fitting to say a word in praise of those organisations who
+sent out parcels to our prisoners. No words can express our gratitude to
+them. To us officers, parcels were sometimes in the nature of a luxury,
+though none the less welcome. But to the men, who starved in dungeons of
+the interior, they came as a very present help in time of need. The
+prisoners' parcels saved many lives, and I hope the kind people who
+worked so hard at home against all sorts of difficulties and
+disappointments realise how grateful we are, and what a great work they
+did. Besides the material relief of provisions, the moral effect of a
+parcel from home on the mind of a sick prisoner cannot be over
+estimated. To open something packed by English hands was like a breath
+of home to him.
+
+We were allowed no communication with the men, so it was very difficult
+to help them. Whether the worst done to our prisoners in Germany equals
+the worst in Turkey I do not know. To compare two horrors is profitless.
+But I do know something of the sufferings of our men, and when I write
+of my own petty amusements and comedies of captivity I do not for a
+moment forget the tragedy of their lives.
+
+Light and shade, however, there must be in every picture, else it is not
+a picture at all. And there must be colour in the canvas, however grim
+the subject.
+
+The poppy fields, which give the town the first part of its name,[1] lay
+right underneath our windows, across the station road. In June, when
+they were white with blossom, and the farmers' wives came out to drain
+the precious fluid from the buds, I used to gaze and gaze at the beauty
+of the world, and long for freedom. To be cooped up in a little room
+when the world was green and white, and the sky a flawless blue, and
+summer rode across the open lands, was miserable. It was unbearable to
+be growing old and immobile, like the hills on the horizon, when one
+might be out among the poppy blossoms. Of what use to be alive, if one
+did not share in the youth of the world?
+
+But we were closely guarded in our cottages and rarely allowed out,
+except into the back garden--a bare space some hundred yards by thirty,
+which was the scene of most of our small activities, from early morning
+skipping to the mid-day display of our washing, and from the occasional
+amateur theatricals of an evening to the rare but tense moments of an
+attempted escape.
+
+A diary of my days might run as follows:
+
+_Monday._ Up at 6 a.m. Skipped 200 times. Two eggs for breakfast, tried
+my new _pekmes_.[2] Read _Hilal_.[3] Looked out places on my hidden map.
+Long argument about the use of cavalry in modern war. Walk in garden.
+Mutton cutlets for lunch. Completed my new hammock. Argued about Free
+Trade. Played badminton in garden. Read philosophy with ---- and ----.
+_Sakuska_[4] party with ---- and ---- at 7.30. Watched Polly picking
+opium. Dinner at 8. Soup, eggs, suet; very satisfactory. Bridge and bed.
+
+_Tuesday._ Up at 6.15. Skipped 250 times, and had a boxing lesson.
+Painful. Two eggs for breakfast, but one bad. _Hilal_ did not arrive.
+Argued about yesterday's cavalry news. Walk in garden. No meat for
+lunch. Bitten by mosquitoes in my hammock. Argued about Protection. Ran
+round the garden ten times. My wind is getting worse. _Sakuska_ party
+at sevenish with ---- and ---- in my room. Polly was seen out walking
+with a _posta_.[5] Dinner at 8. Mutton cutlets. Chess and bed.
+
+And so on, _ad infinitum_.
+
+I had at that time come to the conclusion that I could not reach the
+coast from Afion-kara-hissar, so for some time I sought a mental rather
+than a physical escape from my surroundings. Philosophy seemed an ideal
+subject under the circumstances, and in the company of two friends of
+like mind, I made some study of "Creative Evolution." Every afternoon we
+used to forgather for tea, in a little room I had built, where our joint
+contributions provided a well-selected pabulum of cakes and jam and
+Bergson, so that the inner and the outer man were Platonically at one.
+But to plunge from _le tremplin de la vie_ is not easy in captivity.
+Lack of employment cripples imagination. The average mind works best
+when it has practical things to do, and mine, such as it is, boggles at
+abstractions more quickly than it tires of talk.
+
+When this occurred the best thing to do was to laugh. A friend and I
+used to laugh for hours sometimes over weak and washy stories that would
+hardly pass muster, even in the small hours of the morning. But they did
+us good. Generally, however, the time between tea and dinner was spent
+in learned and weighty discussions on appearance, reality, and the
+problems of Being and Not-being.
+
+With my two friends
+
+  ". . . the seed of Wisdom did I sow
+   And with my own Hand arboured it to grow,
+   But this was all the Harvest that I reaped--
+   I came like Water and like Wind I go."
+
+Only unfortunately I did not go. I remained firmly at Afion-kara-hissar.
+When philosophy failed me, the hours spent in planning escapes and
+concocting cyphers were those which passed most easily. But the craft of
+cyphers, interesting though it be, cannot be discussed in print. Like
+the preparation of poisons, it must remain part of the unpublished
+knowledge of the world, until the millennium. As regards escapes, some
+of us thought a great deal, and did very little. There were, however,
+some ingenious attempts made to get to Constantinople. One officer
+conceived the idea of going there to be treated for hydrophobia, and,
+after inflicting suitable wounds in the calf of his leg with a pair of
+nail scissors, he asserted that a certain dog, well known in the camp,
+had exhibited strange symptoms of insanity, amongst others, that of
+suddenly biting him in the leg. This ruse would have succeeded but for
+the fact that the Turks did not treat hydrophobia with any seriousness.
+Kismet takes no account of the Pasteur system. Short of actually
+snapping at someone, the officer could not have established a belief in
+his infection. He found it simpler to feign another ailment. Two other
+officers, however, of a still more picturesque turn of mind, declared
+that they themselves were mad, and actually hung themselves as a proof
+of insanity. They were found one morning by their astonished sentries
+suspended from a rafter, and apparently in the last stages of
+strangulation. Convinced that they were "afflicted of God," the Turks
+sent them to hospital, and carefully watched for any symptoms of
+suicidal mania. After various astonishing experiences, in their role of
+madmen, amongst real madmen in a Turkish lunatic ward, they were
+eventually exchanged.
+
+In sheer manual dexterity, our prisoners also showed great resource. The
+soldiers who were employed on making a tunnel through the Taurus, to
+take one example, succeeded in purloining various odds and ends from the
+workshops where they laboured under German supervision, until they
+eventually were able to build for themselves a complete collapsible
+boat. This boat they actually tested at dead of night on a river near
+their camp, before setting out to reach the coast. That success did not
+crown their efforts was sheer bad luck. Luck, also, was against most of
+the forty officers who concerted a simultaneous escape from Yuzgad, and
+prepared for it in absolute secrecy, down to the smallest detail, for
+months beforehand. Some of them even made their own boots. Only eight
+out of the original party actually got out of the country, however.
+Their story, surely one of the most remarkable ever written, has
+recently been published.
+
+The two great difficulties in any attempt to escape were: firstly, that
+the Turks, by spies or otherwise, studied the psychology of every
+individual prisoner, setting special guards on the more enterprising
+among them, and, secondly, that the distance of the camp from the coast,
+and the number of brigands infesting every mile of that distance, was
+such that it was extremely difficult to gain the sea, let alone embark
+upon it.
+
+The spies made some very bad guesses about the intentions of the
+prisoners. One harmless and elderly officer was seen greasing a pair of
+marching boots, and this gave rise to the most sinister suspicions.
+Where could the officer want to march to, except the coast? He was
+immediately asked for his parole, and gave it.
+
+Exercise in any form was a sign of incipient madness in the eyes of the
+Turks. Why, they argued, should anyone in his right mind skip five
+hundred times, and then splash himself with ice-cold water? If he did
+such things, he ought certainly to be placed under restraint. Boxing,
+again, was a suspect symptom. A man who bled at the nose for pleasure
+might commit any enormity. In order to circumvent suspicion it was
+necessary to adopt the utmost caution. The method I myself employed is
+described in a later chapter. One friend of mine, while training for a
+trip to Blighty, habitually carried heavy lead plates hung round his
+waist, to accustom himself to the weight of his pack. Such were the
+internal difficulties. But outside the camp the problems were even more
+puzzling. How to avoid the brigands--how to carry food enough for the
+journey--how to elude our guards and get a few hours' start--what
+clothes to wear and what pack to carry--how to find one's way--how to
+get a boat once the coast was reached--here were well-nigh insoluble
+questions, which provided, however, excellent topics for talk.
+
+I talked about these things for eighteen months. But I will ask the
+reader to skip that dismal procession of moons, and come directly to the
+day when I was asked by the Commandant to sign a paper stating that I
+would not attempt to escape. I naturally refused, as also did another
+officer to whom the same request was made.
+
+Our negotiations in this matter, while interesting to us at the time,
+and involving the composition of several noble documents in French, led
+to the sad result that we were both transferred, at an hour's notice, to
+a little box of a house in the Armenian quarter. Once inside the house,
+with the various belongings we had collected during a twelve-month of
+captivity in Afion-kara-hissar, we two completely filled the only
+habitable room. And although habitable in a sense, this room was already
+occupied by undesirable tenants.
+
+I must here, rather diffidently, introduce the subject of vermin. But,
+saving the public's presence, bugs are the very devil. Other insects are
+nothing to them. Lice the gallant reader may have met at the front.
+Fleas are a common experience. Centipedes and scorpions are well known
+in India. But bugs are Beelzebub's especial pets, and Beelzebub is a
+ruler in Turkey. It is quite impossible to write of my captivity there
+without mentioning these small, flat creatures who live in beds. I
+cannot disregard them: they have bitten into my very being.
+
+Imagine lying down, after a sordid day of dust and disagreeableness. One
+thinks of home, or the sea. One tries to slide out to the gulfs of
+sleep, where healing is. But rest does not come: there is a sense of
+malaise. One's skin feels irritable and unclean. Presently there is an
+itching at one's wrists, and at the back of one's neck. One squashes
+something, and there is a smear of blood (one's own good blood) and one
+realises that one's skin (one's own good skin) is being punctured by
+these evil beasts. Almost instantly one squashes another. A horrible
+odour arises. One lights the candle, and there, scuttling under the
+pillow, are five or six more of these loathsome vermin. They not only
+suck one's blood. They sap one's faith in life.
+
+  "If one could dream that such a world began
+   In some slow devil's heart that hated man,"
+
+indeed one would not be mistaken. In them the powers of Satan seem
+incarnate.
+
+Having killed every bug in sight, one lies back and gasps. And then, out
+of the corner of one's eye, creeping up the pillow, and hugely magnified
+by proximity, another monstrous brute appears. It runs forward,
+horribly avid, and eager, and brisk. All the cruelty of nature is in its
+hideous head, all the activity of evil in its darting body. Presently
+another and another appear. There is no end to them. You kill them on
+the bed, and they appear on the walls. You search out and slaughter
+every form of life within reach, but the bugs still drop on you from the
+ceiling. No killing can assuage their appetite for a healthy body.
+Reckless of danger, they batten on the young. Regardless of death, they
+swarm to silky skin. Of two victims, they will always choose the one in
+best condition.
+
+After being eaten by bugs for some time, one feels infected with their
+contamination. It is almost impossible to rise superior to them. In one
+night a man can live through the miseries of Job.
+
+It may be imagined therefore that our confinement in that little house
+was not amusing. My companion in misfortune and myself lived in that box
+for a week with the bugs, without once going out of the door. Now, to
+stay in a room for a week may not seem a very trying punishment (I was
+later to spend a month in solitary confinement); but when the punishment
+is wholly undeserved, and when, moreover, one is wrongly suspected of
+something one would like to do but has not done, and when one is bitten
+all night, and when from confinement one sees other officers walking
+about in comparative freedom, one naturally begins to fret.
+
+There were compensations, however. Firstly, a friendship grew between
+my companion and myself which I hope will endure through life. Secondly,
+as a prisoner, any sort of change is welcome. And, thirdly, we felt we
+were doing something useful. The Commandant did not dare to force us to
+sign parole. Neither could he keep us permanently in special restraint.
+It is rarely that one gets the chance, as a prisoner, of putting the
+enemy on the horns of such a dilemma.
+
+This Commandant, an ugly, drunken beast, who is now, I hope, expiating
+the innumerable crimes he committed against our men, caused a search to
+be made one day amongst the effects of all the prisoners at
+Afion-kara-hissar. One of the most interesting things he found was a
+diary kept by a senior British officer, with the following entry:
+
+"New Commandant arrived. His face looks as if it was meant to strike
+matches on."
+
+No better description could possibly have been written. He was a vain
+man, and it must have cut him to the quick to see himself as others saw
+him.
+
+After a month of "special treatment" the Commandant learnt that Turkish
+Army Headquarters, fearing reprisals, no doubt, would not support his
+bluff in punishing us if we did not give parole. He had to climb down
+completely.
+
+We were transferred to another house, in the Armenian quarter, already
+occupied by some R.N.A.S. officers, who were all determined to escape
+if opportunity arose. A very cheery house-party we made.
+
+The time was now the year of grace 1917, and our life was organised to
+some extent. Once or twice a week we were allowed to play football, or
+go for a walk. On Thursdays we used to troop down in a body to visit the
+officers in the other houses, and on Monday mornings we were sometimes
+able, with special permission, to attend the weekly fair of coke and
+firewood held in the market-place. All this gave an interest to our
+lives, and money, so long as one was prepared to write cheques, was not
+a source of difficulty. The Turks, in fact, encouraged us to write
+cheques, exchanging them for Turkish notes at nearly double their face
+value (190 piastres for a pound was the best I myself received), because
+they rightly thought that our signature was worth more than the
+guarantees of the Turkish Government. I heard afterwards that our
+cheques had a brisk circulation on the Constantinople Bourse. But one
+was loth to write many. Five pounds is five pounds--and in Turkey it
+represented only a packet of tea or a kilogram of sugar. . . . I saved
+as much as I could for bribes when escaping.
+
+A microscopic, but not unamusing, social life was in full swing. There
+were parties and politics, clubs and cliques. Each prisoner, according
+to his temperament, took his choice between grave pursuits and gay.
+
+There were lecturers (really good ones) who discoursed on a wide range
+of topics, from Mendelism to Mesopotamia. There were professors of
+French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hindustani, and I
+daresay all the languages of Babel, ready to teach in return for
+reciprocal instruction in English. Our library contained many luminous
+volumes, kindly sent out by the Board of Trade. Law and Seamanship,
+Semaphoring and Theology, Carpentry and the Integral Calculus, Gardening
+and Genetics--such is a random selection of the subjects on which there
+were experts available and eager to impart information.
+
+But, personally, my mind resisted the seductions of learning. I learned
+only how to waste time. And sometimes, perhaps, I touched the hem of
+Philosophy's garment, and stammered a few words to her. Otherwise I did
+nothing except try to forget things . . . things seen.
+
+Yet one enjoyed oneself, occasionally. The football was great fun. So
+also were some of the lighter sides of our indoor life. Poker used to
+pass the time. So also, though more rarely, did reading. The plays which
+a dramatist--soon to be eminent, I expect--presented to enthusiastic
+audiences are delightful memories. His revues and topical verses were
+worthy of a wider audience, and I am sure his work--unlike the most of
+our labours--will not be wasted.
+
+But best of all, I think, was to sit in a circle on the floor round a
+brazier on a winter's evening, and sip hot lemon _'araq_, and listen to
+songs and stories. It was a relief to laugh, and forget the fate of
+those we could not help.
+
+  "Sweet life, if love were stronger,
+   Earth clear of years that wrong her . . ."
+
+sang a soft Irish voice, whose melody seemed to melt into the cold of
+one's captivity. . . . Then there were the fancy dress balls held on New
+Year's Eve in 1917 and 1918. So good were they that for the night one
+completely forgot one's surroundings. A very attractive barmaid
+dispensed refreshments behind a table. There were several debutantes,
+and at least one chaperone. Pierrot was there, and Pierrette, and
+Mephistopheles, and Bacchus, and a very realistic Pirate. If some
+reveller in London had looked in on us at midnight he might easily have
+fancied himself at an Albert Hall dance. He would certainly not have
+guessed that all the clothes and furniture and food were home-made, and
+that everyone in the room was a British officer. The self-confident
+flapper, for instance, who could only have given him "the next missing
+three" was a Major in the Flying Corps. And the girl at the bar, with
+big brown eyes, who would have offered him _'araq_ so charmingly was
+really a submarine officer of the Navy, and a well-known figure at "The
+Goat."
+
+After functions such as these, the morning after the night before found
+me wondering where it would all end. If the war lasted another ten
+years, would I ever be fit to take a place in normal life? How long
+could I keep sane in this topsy-turvy world? . . .
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The weather in the winter of 1918 was absolutely arctic. For a month
+there was a very hard frost, and during all this time, had it not been
+for festivities such as the foregoing I should have stayed stupidly in
+bed and hibernated until the spring. Intenser cold I have never felt. In
+the room in which we dined the water froze in our glasses on several
+occasions while we were eating our evening meal. Icy winds howled
+through the house, and the paper windows we had improvised (to replace
+unobtainable glass) had burst, through weight of snow. Also, the plaster
+of the outer walls of our mansion had peeled off, so that cold blasts
+penetrated through the walls. With few clothes and only one pair of
+leaky boots it was impossible to keep warm and dry-shod. Fuel, of
+course, was very scarce. In my bedroom some precious quarts of beer,
+which I was preserving for Christmas, froze and cracked their bottles. I
+invited a party to taste my blocks of amber ice, but they were better to
+look at than to swallow.
+
+Under these climatic conditions washing was a labour that took one the
+best part of the morning, and until I caught a chill I used to economize
+time and fuel by rolling in the snow on the flat roof of my house. This
+amused me, and surprised the neighbourhood, but it was a poor substitute
+for a bath. That winter was a black, bleak time.
+
+During the hard frost it was impossible to escape, but we used
+occasionally to reconnoitre the sentries outside our house after
+lock-up. I have spent some amusing moments in this way, especially in
+watching one sentry (generally on duty at midnight) who used to warm
+himself by playing with a cat. With pussy on one arm and his rifle on
+the other, he formed a delightfully casual figure. It would have been
+quite easy to pass him, but the difficulties lay beyond. . . .
+
+I then thought, wrongly I dare say, that the only reasonable hope of
+success lay in starting from Constantinople, and it was to this end that
+my real schemes were shaping. But I thought it well to have two strings
+to my bow, and besides, I considered no day well spent which did not
+include some practical effort towards escape.
+
+A complex of causes contributed to this idea, which became almost an
+obsession. First, I dare say, was boredom. Second, the feeling that one
+was not earning one's pay or doing one's duty by remaining idly a
+prisoner. And thirdly--or was it firstly?--the condition under which our
+men were living and the crimes which had been committed against them
+made it imperative that someone should get to England with our news. It
+was high time, and past high time, that the civilised world should know
+how our prisoners fared.
+
+I have already written the savage story of our life at Mosul, where the
+men died from calculated cruelty. The history of the Kut prisoners is
+even worse, for the crime was on a greater scale.
+
+That garrison, debilitated from the long siege and the climatic
+conditions of Mesopotamia, were marched right across Asia Minor with
+hardly any clothes, no money, and insufficient food. Their nameless
+sufferings will never be known in full, for many died in the desert,
+clubbed to death by their guards, stripped naked, and left by the
+roadside. Others were abandoned in Arab villages, when in the last
+stages of fever or dysentery. Others, more fortunate, were found dead by
+their companions after the night's halt, when the huddled sleepers
+turned out to face another day of misery. Hopeless indeed the outlook
+must have seemed to some lad fresh from the fields of home. The brutal
+sentries, the arid desert, the daily deaths, the daily quarrels, the
+bitterness of the future, as bleak as the acres of sand that stretched
+to their unknown destination, the dwindling company of friends, the grip
+of thirst, the pangs of hunger, and the pains of death--such was the
+outlook for many a lad who died between Baghdad and Aleppo. Ghosts of
+such memories must not be lightly evoked amongst those alive to-day,
+friends of the fallen, but always they will haunt the trails of the
+northern Arabian desert.
+
+Through it all our men were heroes. To the last they showed their
+captors of what stuff the Anglo-Saxon is made. The cowardly Kurds, who
+were the worst of the various escorts provided between Baghdad and
+Aleppo, never dared to insult our men unless they outnumbered them four
+to one. Even then they generally waited until some sick man fell down
+from exhaustion before clubbing him to death with their rifle-butts.
+
+In the middle of the desert, between Mosul and Aleppo, a friend of mine
+found six half-demented British soldiers who had been propped up against
+the wall of a mud hut and left there to die. There was no transport, no
+medicines. Nothing could be done for them. They died long before the
+relief parties organised at Aleppo could come to their rescue.
+
+At Aleppo the hospital treatment was extremely bad.
+
+All men who were fit to move (and many who were not) were sent on in
+cattle trucks to various camps in the centre of Anatolia, and when at
+length they reached these camps after vicissitudes which were only a
+dreary repetition of earlier experiences, they came upon the plague of
+typhus at its height, and naturally, in this weakened state, succumbed
+by scores and hundreds.
+
+To see a body of our soldiers arriving at Afion-kara-hissar, pushed and
+kicked and beaten by their escort, was terrible.
+
+Our men were literally skeletons alive, skeletons with skin stretched
+across their bones, and a few rags on their backs. This is an exact
+statement of things seen. They struggled up the road, hardly able to
+carry the pitiful little bundles containing scraps of bread, a bit of
+soap, a mug, all, in short, that they had been able to save from
+systematic looting on the way.
+
+In silence, and unswerving, they passed up that road to the hospital,
+and all who saw those companies of Englishmen so grim and gallant in
+adversity must have felt proud their veins carried the same blood.
+
+Once in hospital our prisoners fared no better. There were no beds for
+them, and hardly any blankets or medicines. They died in groups, lying
+outside the hospital.
+
+It was a common sight to see sad parties of our men passing down this
+same road, away from the hospital this time, and towards the cemetery.
+Those weary processions, consisting of four or five emaciated men, with
+a stretcher and a couple of shovels, used to pass underneath our windows
+going to bury their comrade. They were a party of skeletons alive,
+carrying a skeleton dead.
+
+[Footnote 1: Afion = opium.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Pekmes_: a substitute for jam and sugar, made from
+raisins.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The _Hilal_: a Moslem morning paper, published in French.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Sakuska_: Russian for hors d'oeuvres--such as sardines,
+frogs' legs, onions, bits of cheese, or indeed anything edible.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Posta_: a Turkish sentry.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON
+
+
+The contrast of tragedy and farce and the incidents, and the lack of
+incident, which I have attempted to sketch in the foregoing chapter, had
+a marked mental effect on all of us. But each felt the effects of
+confinement differently. With me, I came to look on my life in Turkey as
+something outside the actuality of existence. I did not feel "myself" at
+all. I was disembodied, left with no link with the outer world, except
+memory and anticipation. I was in a dark forest far from all avenues of
+activity such as the sanity of society and the companionship of women.
+My world seemed make-believe, and my interests counterfeit.
+
+I worked at a novel with a friend of mine, and for a time that seemed
+something practical to do. But there was always the fear that it would
+be taken from us by the Turks, and the possibility that we would never
+publish it.
+
+Doubt and indecision lay heavy on me. I did not know how long captivity
+would last. A criminal's sentence is fixed: not so a prisoner of war's.
+He is dependent on matters beyond his control, and a will beyond his
+narrow ambit. To reach that outside will, and to form a part of it
+again, was my dominating wish. Through the glasses of captivity the
+world was colourless and distorted. Only freedom could make me see it
+again aright. And when freedom seemed remote, the world was very
+colourless.
+
+The novel amused me by snatches. Learning languages amused me at times.
+But these things were really the diversions of a child, who dreams
+through all its lesson-time of another and a fairer world.
+
+But, unlike a child, I became absorbed in self. I analysed my moods, and
+thought gloomily about my health. I mourned my youth, as my hair turned
+grey. The sorrows of the spinster were mine and the griefs of the
+middle-aged. The value of material things was magnified. The pleasures
+of the palate, I confess, assumed an exaggerated importance. I found a
+new joy in food, and sometimes I dreamed that I was eating. Also I
+contracted the habit of smoking cigarettes in the middle of the night.
+And I learnt that the effect of alcohol, when one is very depressed, is
+like putting in the top clutch of the car of consciousness, so that one
+runs forward smoothly on the road of life. In short, I enjoyed eating
+and drinking and smoking in a way that I had never done before, and
+never will again, I hope. But I know now why public-houses flourish.
+After my own experience of deathly dullness, I heartily sympathise with
+those who seek relief in alcohol and nicotine. They may be poison, but
+in this imperfect world the deadliest poison of all is boredom.
+Prohibition, as I saw it in Turkey, when tobacco was short, or food was
+scarce, or alcohol was forbidden, did not impress me as being
+beneficial. The fact is, we all need stimulant of one sort or another.
+Normally our work, our home, or our hopes supply this need. Almost
+everyone in the world is struggling (however carefully they may disguise
+the fact) to be other than they are, and better (or worse) than they
+are. We strive after superlatives and are rarely satisfied by them. But
+in captivity, as in other circumstances of distress, this stay in life,
+this hope of something different and wish for something _more_, is
+suddenly removed. We are left without _stimuli_. Nothing seems to
+matter. One's mental and material habits inevitably relax. A muddy idea
+seems as good as a clear one--a sloppy suit of clothes serves as well as
+a tidy one. Energy wanes.
+
+But why? The reason is that the average mind cannot live on
+abstractions. It must grapple with something practical. One must sharpen
+one's wits on the world, and it is just this that as a prisoner one
+cannot do. One cannot "lay hold on life," because there is no life to
+lay hold of, except an unnatural and artificial existence, where the
+sympathy of women and the dignity of work are absent. That was the crux
+of the matter. Sympathy and dignity were lacking in our life. We heard
+of advances and retreats as from another sphere. We read of great
+heroisms and great sorrows without being close to them. We had no part
+in the quarrel. We were in a squalid by-way, living out a mean tragedy,
+while the fate of all we loved was in the balance. Never again would we
+go fighting.
+
+From the moment of our capture we had passed into a strange narrow life,
+where the spirit of man, while retaining all its old memories and hopes,
+could not express them in action.
+
+Captivity is a minor form of death, and I was dead, to all intents and
+purposes.
+
+Often, lying a-bed in the early morning, I used to feel that my body was
+completely gone, and that only a fanciful and feverish intelligence
+remained. I remember especially one dawn in the spring of 1917, when I
+watched two figures passing down the station road. Slouching towards the
+station, and all unconscious of the beauty of the waking world, came a
+soldier with his pack and rifle. He wore the grey Turkish uniform, his
+beard was grey, his cheeks were also grey and sunken. Slowly, slowly he
+dragged his heavy feet towards the train that would take him away to the
+war. The train had been already signalled, I knew (for I kept notes of
+the traffic in those days), and I found myself hoping anxiously that he
+would not be late. The sooner he was killed the better. He was old and
+ugly and ill. If only such as he could perish. . . . Then my thought
+took wings of the morning. From the soldier, plodding onwards devotedly,
+as so many men have gone to their deaths, my eye ranged across the
+plains, lying dim and dark to eastward, to the horizon mountains of the
+Suleiman Dagh, whose snow had already seen the messengers of morning
+hasting from the lands below our world. And man seemed mean and minute
+in the purposes of Nature. So ugly was he, such a blot on the landscape
+with his trains and soldiers, that I wondered he continued to exist.
+There was a life above our life in the dawn. The powers of the world
+knew nothing of this soldier's hopes and fears. To them his endeavours
+were a comedy. A huge mountain-back, with the gesture of some giant in
+the playtime of long ago, seemed shrugging its shoulders at this
+ridiculous straying atom of a moment's space. The train came in, and I
+saw its smoke above the tree-tops of the station. It whistled shrilly,
+and the soldier quickened his pace. No doubt he was late. Perhaps he
+still survives, and is toiling even now towards some trench. Anyway he
+passed from my ken, but I still stood at the window, looking towards the
+mountains and the sky.
+
+Then there passed an archaic ox-cart, creaking down the road slowly, as
+it has creaked down the ages, from the night of Time. It was drawn by a
+white heifer, whose shoulders strained against the yoke, for it was a
+heavy cart. But she went forward willingly, resignedly. Work was her
+portion. She would live and die under the yoke. She licked her cool
+muzzle, dusted flies with her neat tail, and looked forward with
+wistful eyes that seemed to see beyond her working world, to some
+ultimate haven for the quiet workers. Somewhere she would find rest at
+last. To my feverish imagination that white heifer symbolised the pathos
+of all the driven souls who go forward unquestioning to destiny.
+
+And the soldier with his pack was a type also of voiceless millions who
+carry the burden of our civilisation.
+
+We stagger on, under the bludgeonings of chance, and but rarely lift our
+eyes to the dawn, although a daily miracle is there. Someone conducts
+the orient-rite, regardless of the lives of men, which come sweeping on,
+on the tide of war, to end in foam and froth. Yet from this stir of hate
+and heroism some purpose must surely rise. From the travail of the
+trenches some meaning will be born.
+
+I saw things thus, through images and symbols. Across the vast inanity
+of that waiting time, streaks of vision used to flash, like distant
+summer lightning. Impermanent, but beautiful to me, they lit a fair
+horizon. Else, all was dark.
+
+To call this time a death in life seems an overstatement, but if my
+experiences in Turkey had any mental value at all, it was just this: to
+teach me how to die. A curtain had come down on consciousness when I was
+captured. Since then I only lived in the Before and After of captivity.
+My old self was finished. I saw it in clear but disjunct pictures of
+recollection: pig-sticking, sailing, dining, dancing, or on the road to
+Messines one hard November night when feet froze in stirrups and horses
+slipped and struck blue lights from the cobbles. And my new self awaited
+the moment of freedom. It still stirred in the womb of war.
+
+Even so, in my belief, do the souls of our comrades lost consider their
+lives on earth and look back on their time of trial with interest and
+regret. Discarnate, they cannot achieve their desires, yet they long to
+manifest again in the world of men. With level and unclouded eyes they
+consider the incidents of mortality, and find in them a Purpose to
+continue. There is work for them in the world through many lives, and
+love, which will meet and re-meet its love. And so at last, drawn by
+duty and affection, those who have woven their lives in the tapestry of
+our time will one day take up the threads again.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE COMIC HOSPITAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+The one bulwark against morbidity was hope of an escape. Only by getting
+away, or at any rate making an attempt, could I justify my continued
+existence, when so many good men were dying in the world outside--and at
+our own doors.
+
+Now certain spies, as I have told, were constantly on the look-out for
+officers likely to give trouble to our custodians. The Commandant, I
+knew, suspected me of wanting to escape, owing to my general eagerness
+for exercise. I thought, therefore, that if I could induce him to
+believe that I was ready to dream away my days at Afion-kara-hissar, I
+should have established that confidence in my character which is the
+basis of all success. I consequently purchased some two pounds of a
+certain dark and viscous drug, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. With a sort of
+theatrical secrecy (for even in Turkey Mrs. Grundy has her say), I
+proceeded to prepare the stuff by boiling it for two hours in a copper
+saucepan. I did this on a day when one of the Turkish staff came to the
+house to distribute letters. Naturally the smell attracted notice. I
+made flimsy excuses to account for it.
+
+After distilling the decoction, filtering, and then boiling it down to
+the consistency of treacle, the first phase of my little plan was
+ended. One of the Turkish staff, a certain Cypriote youth, had become
+thoroughly interested in my proceedings.
+
+I showed him, under vows of secrecy which I knew he would not keep, the
+stage property I had bought, consisting of two bamboo pipes, a lamp, a
+terra-cotta bowl, some darning needles, and the "treacle" in a jampot.
+Fortunately the most of these implements I had obtained second-hand from
+a real opium-smoker, so that they did not look too new. Also I had read
+de Quincey and Claude Farrere. After discussing the subject at length,
+the Cypriote suggested that we might smoke together one evening. I
+agreed with alacrity.
+
+One night after lock-up, therefore, I slipped out of my house, with my
+paraphernalia hidden under my overcoat. A specially bribed Turkish
+sentry brought me to a silent, shuttered house in a side street. Here
+the door was opened by an evil-looking harridan, who showed me upstairs
+to a thickly carpeted room, strewn with cushions, on which my host was
+lying. The blinds were drawn and only the glimmer of a little green lamp
+lit the wreaths of whitish smoke which curled down from the low ceiling.
+The fumes stang my palate and thrilled me with expectancy. I could
+taste, rather than smell, that strange savour of opium which fascinates
+its devotees.
+
+I lay down, in the semi-darkness, on a sofa beside my host. After some
+general conversation, I showed him my pipes and needles, but he said
+that for that evening I should only smoke the opium of his brewing.
+
+"It is a joy to have found a fellow-spirit," I sighed. "When one has
+opium one wants nothing more."
+
+"How many pipes do you smoke a day?" he asked.
+
+"Fifty," I said boldly, adding, "when I am in practice."
+
+"That is nothing," said the Cypriote. "I smoke a hundred. Come, let us
+begin. Time is empty, except for opium."
+
+"But who will prepare our pipes?" I asked.
+
+"We will do that ourselves," he answered.
+
+"I can't," I had to admit. "I--I am used to an attendant, who hands me
+my pipes already cooked."
+
+"There is no one here," he said, "except an ugly old woman. But I will
+show you myself. Half the pleasure is lost if another hand prepares the
+precious fluid. See, you take a drop of opium--so--on the point of the
+needle, and holding it over the flame of the lamp, you turn and turn it
+gently until it swells and expands and glows with its hidden life. From
+a black drop it changes to a glowing bubble of crimson. Then you cool it
+again, moulding and pressing it back to a little pellet upon the glass
+of the lampshade. Then again you cook it, and again you cool it. Only
+experience can tell when it is ready to smoke. It is an art, like other
+arts. I would rather cook opium than write a poem. It is even better
+than money. Now you take your pipe and, heating the little hole through
+which the opium is smoked, so that it will stick, you thrust your
+needle--so--into the hole, and then withdraw it again, leaving the
+pellet of perfect peace behind. And now, lying on your left side, with
+your head well back amongst the cushions, you hold your pipe over the
+flame and draw in a long and grateful breath. In and in you
+breathe. . . ."
+
+I watched him take a deep draught of the drug, and then lie back among
+the cushions with heavy-lidded eyes. For a full half-minute he remained
+silent and dreaming, then expelled the thick white smoke with a sigh of
+bliss.
+
+It was my turn now, and not without some dismay (although curiosity was
+probably a stronger emotion) I accepted a pipe of his preparing. I
+inhaled in and in--I choked a little--and then lay back with a
+dreaminess that was not simulated, for it had made me feel giddy.
+
+"You prepare a most perfect pipe," I coughed through the acrid fumes.
+
+But I had realised immediately that I had not an opium temperament. In
+all I smoked ten small pipes that first evening, without feeling any ill
+effects beyond a heavy lassitude, which lasted all through the following
+day. I was disappointed and disgusted by the experience. The beautiful
+dreams are a myth. So also is the deadly fascination of the drug. I
+loathed it more each time I tasted it.
+
+Yet those nights I lay on a sofa, _couche a gauche_ as opium-smokers
+say, weaving a tissue of deceit into the grey-white clouds encircling
+us, will always remain one of the most curious memories of my life. The
+couches, the needles and the pipes, the pin-point pupils and wicked
+profile of my host, as he leaned over the green glimmer of the lamp
+which burnt to the god to whom his heart was given, and the growth of
+that god in him, as pipe followed pipe to stir his consciousness, and
+the beatitude that lit his features, as he looked up from amidst the
+cushions to that dream-world of subtle smoke, to be seen only with
+narrowed eyes, where princes of the poppies reign: this had a glamour
+against the drab setting of captivity which I will neither deny nor
+excuse. I was doing something practical once more. Instead of reading
+philosophy or playing chess, I was engaged in a human game, whose stake
+was freedom.
+
+A measure of success attended my efforts, for I learnt from the
+Cypriote, in the course of subsequent visits to his house, that if I
+wished for a holiday to Constantinople it would not be difficult to
+arrange.
+
+I think we were both playing a double game.
+
+We both tried to make the other talk, he with the idea of getting
+information about the camp and I in the hope of picking up some hint as
+to where to hide in Constantinople. But card-sharpers might as well have
+tried to fleece each other by the three card trick. His knowledge of
+Constantinople seemed to be _nil_, while the information he got out of
+me would not have filled his opium pipe. After these excursions I used
+sometimes to wonder whether I was not wasting my time and health. But
+time is cheap in captivity, and as to health, I used to counteract the
+opium by counter-orgies of exercises. In the early mornings I skipped
+and bathed in secret, but in the daytime I tottered wanly about the
+streets, and whenever I saw the Cypriote I told him that I craved for
+_confiture_: this being our name for opium.
+
+In my condition it was an easy matter to be sent to the doctor. I told
+him various astonishing stories about my health, chiefly culled from a
+French medical work which I found in the waiting-room of his house.
+Within a month I was transferred to Haidar Pasha Hospital, near
+Constantinople. Had I been in brutal health, the operation to my nose
+which was the ostensible reason of my departure would not have been
+considered necessary. But I had been removed from the category of
+suspects, and was now considered an amiable invalid.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The guard on my northward journey was more like a sick attendant than a
+sentry. I showed him some opium pills, which I declared were delicious
+to take. He evinced the greatest interest, and I was able to prevail on
+him to swallow two or three as an experiment. Unfortunately, after he
+had taken them, I discovered they contained nothing more exciting than
+cascara. They did not send him to sleep at all.
+
+We arrived at Haidar Pasha without incident. Before being admitted, my
+effects were searched, and stored away, but being by that time
+accustomed to searches, I was able to hide, upon my person, a variety
+of things that would be useful in an escape, notably a compass, and a
+complete set of maps of Constantinople and its surroundings.
+
+Captain Sir Robert Paul, with whom I had discussed plans at
+Afion-kara-hissar, was already installed in hospital, where he was being
+treated for an aural complaint. His friendship was an inestimable
+stand-by through the months that followed. Through scenes of farce and
+tragedy he was always the same feckless and fearless spirit. In success,
+as in adversity, he kept an equal mien. Without him, the most amusing
+chapters in my life would not have happened, and if I write "_I_" in the
+pages which follow, it is only because Robin, as I shall hereafter call
+him, has not been consulted about this record of our days together.
+Owing to circumstances beyond our control, the full responsibility for
+this story must be mine. The seas divide us. I cannot ask his help, or
+solicit his approval.
+
+The hospital at Haidar Pasha was the most delightfully casual place
+imaginable. One wandered into one's ward in a Turkish nightshirt, and
+wandered out again at will, the only limits to peregrination being the
+boundaries of the hospital and one's own rather fantastic dress. Unless
+one asked loudly and insistently for medicines or attendance, no one
+dreamed of doing anything at all in the way of treatment. The only
+attention the patients received was to be turned out of the hospital
+when they were either dead or restored to health. Under the latter
+category a crowd of invalids came every day, who were generally ejected
+just before noon, clamouring loudly for their mid-day meal, and the
+unexpended portion of their day's ration. Of deaths in hospital I
+witnessed only one, although scores occurred during my stay. One evening
+an Armenian officer was brought into my ward with severe wounds in the
+head, due to a prematurely exploded bomb. He was laid flat on a bed, and
+instantly proceeded to choke. No one came near him. It seemed obvious to
+me that if he was propped up by pillows he would be able to breathe. But
+no one propped him up. I suggested to the hospital orderly that this
+should be done, and he said, "Yarin." And "yarin" the poor officer died
+of lack of breath. How sick men survived is a mystery to me, because
+they were never attended to, unless strong enough to scream. Screaming,
+however, is a habit to which the Turkish patient is not averse. He does
+not believe in the stoical repression of feeling. Strong and brave men
+will bellow like bulls while their wounds are being dressed. Unless,
+indeed, one makes a fuss, no one will believe one is being hurt. I have
+seen mutton-fisted dressers tearing off bandages by main force, while
+some unfortunate patient with a stoical tradition sweats with agony and
+bites his lips in silence.
+
+But although the Turk cries out, he is by no means a coward under the
+knife. His stern and simple faith seems to help him here. There is
+something very fine about a good Moslem's readiness for death. No man
+who knows the religion, or has lived intimately among its adherents, can
+fail to give it reverence. Before God all men are equal, and when one
+walks about in a nightshirt, one begins to realise this fundamental
+truth. There was a great friendliness in that hospital, and a cordiality
+that coloured the otherwise sordid surroundings. Poor jettison of the
+war, broken with fighting, or rotten with disease, or shamming sick, we
+forgathered in the corridors, or in the garden, with no thought for the
+external advantages of rank and fortune.
+
+Matches at that time had practically disappeared from Turkey, and
+whenever one issued from the ward with a cigarette between one's lips,
+one was beset by invalids in search of a light. Who lit the original
+vestal fire I do not know, but I am sure it was never extinguished in
+that hospital. Patients smoked and talked all night.
+
+We took our part with pleasure in this picnic life. Robin, with
+remarkable skill, had contrived to smuggle in various forbidden bottles,
+which contributed greatly to our popularity. One drink especially, from
+its innocuous appearance and stimulating properties, found great favour
+amongst the patients. It was known as "Iran," and consisted of equal
+parts of sour milk and brandy. A teetotaller might safely be seen with a
+long glass of creamy-looking fluid, yet Omar Khayyam himself would not
+have despised a jug of it. Imbibing this, we used to hold polyglot
+pow-wows with the patients, in French, German, Arabic, Italian, and
+Turkish. Sugar and tea from our parcels also did much to promote
+cordiality.
+
+The recent explosion in Haidar Pasha station, which blew out all the
+windows of our (adjacent) hospital, and the first British air raid of
+1918 were frequent topics of discussion. With regard to these events we
+invented a beautiful lie, namely, that the station explosions were the
+result of bombardment by a new type of submarine we possessed, but that,
+_per contra_, the first air raid, which did no damage, was not carried
+out by British aircraft at all. We proved by assorted arguments in
+various languages that the bombs on Constantinople had come from German
+aeroplanes, the raid being a display of Hun frightfulness, to show what
+would happen if Turkish allegiance wavered over the thorny question of
+the disposal of the Black Sea fleet. Nothing was too improbable to be
+true in Constantinople, and nothing indeed was too absurd to be
+possible. Enver Pasha had made a monopoly in milk, and a corner in
+velvet. The new Sultan was intriguing for the downfall of the Young
+Turks. The funds of the Committee of Union and Progress had been sent to
+Switzerland, where a Turkish pound purchased thirteen francs of Swiss
+security, or half its face value. Fortunes were won and lost on the
+meteoric fluctuations of paper money. A lunatic inmate of the hospital
+(formerly a Smyrniote financier, driven to despair by the press gang)
+told me that he could make a million on the bourse if they only set him
+free for a few hours, and I daresay he was right. Anything might have
+happened during those summer days. Secret presses were engaged in
+printing broadsheets of revolution. The nearer the Germans got to Paris,
+the more persistent were the stories of their defeat. The air was
+electric with rumours. The story about German aeroplanes bombing
+Constantinople, which we had started in jest, was retailed to us later,
+in all earnestness, and with every detail to give it probability.
+Anything to the discredit of their ally found currency in the Turkish
+capital.
+
+An Ottoman cadet in my ward, for instance, used to impersonate a German
+officer ordering his dinner in a Turkish restaurant. He managed somehow
+to convey the swagger, and the stays, and the stiff neck. Clattering his
+sword behind him, he used to seat himself stiffly at a table and call
+haughtily for a waiter. Then, after glaring at the menu, he used to
+order--a dish of haricot beans. "Des haricots," he used to snap, with
+hand on sword-hilt in the exact and invariable Prussian manner.
+
+But to the last, the Germans were all-unconscious of what went on behind
+their corseted backs. Only at the time of the armistice, when they were
+pelted with rotten vegetables, did they realise that something was
+amiss.
+
+To return to our hospital. Our day began with rice and broth at six in
+the morning. At nine the visiting doctor made his rounds and the
+patients who needed medicines clamoured for them. Unless one made a
+fuss, however, one was left in perfect peace. At midday there was more
+rice and broth, with occasional lumps of meat. The afternoon was devoted
+to sleep, and the evenings to exercise in the garden, or intrigue. Rice
+and broth concluded the day. This sounds dull, but after two years of
+prison life, the hours seemed as crowded as a London season's. To begin
+with, we did not attempt to subsist on hospital fare, but commissioned
+various orderlies and friends to buy us food outside. Then there was the
+never-failing interest of making plans. A certain person raised our
+hopes to the zenith by telling us of the possibility of a boat calling
+for us at night, at a landing place just below the British cemetery. The
+idea was to embark in this boat, row across to a steamer, and there
+enter large sealed boxes in which we would pass the Customs up the
+Bosphorus, and then make Odessa. The plan was almost complete. The
+shipping people had been "squared." It only remained for us to select
+the spot from which to embark. With this object in view, we reconnoitred
+the British cemetery which abutted on the hospital grounds. It was then
+being used as an anti-aircraft station, and when, a few days later, the
+first air raid came, we saw the exact positions of the Turkish machine
+guns, spitting lead at our aircraft from among the Crimean graves. This
+air raid, and the atmosphere of "frightfulness" caused thereby, rather
+interfered with our escape plans. First of all we were forbidden to go
+near the British cemetery, and later other small privileges were
+curtailed which greatly "cramped our style." For some time we could not
+get in touch with the person already alluded to.
+
+Meanwhile the arrival of our aeroplanes was a very stimulating sight.
+Everyone in hospital turned out to see the show.
+
+Crump! crump! Woof!--said the bombs.
+
+Woo-woo-woom!--answered the Archies.
+
+Kk-kk-kk-kk! chattered the machine guns.
+
+"God is great," muttered the hospital staff.
+
+"Give me a gun!" cried one of the two British officers posing as
+lunatics (I have already related how they had pretended to hang
+themselves). "Give me a gun," he reiterated loudly--"this is all a plot
+to kill me, and I must defend myself!"
+
+Calmly and confidently our machines sailed through the barrage, dropped
+their bombs, turned to have a look at Constantinople, and then sailed
+away.
+
+The British lunatic shook his fist at them, as he was led back gibbering
+to his ward. The head doctor was much concerned as to his condition.
+
+"Every day," he told me--"some new madness takes that poor deluded
+creature. Eighteen pounds were paid to him recently and he promptly tore
+the notes in half and scattered them about the room. When he was asked
+if he wanted anything from the Embassy he wrote for a ton of carbolic
+soap, and half a ton of chocolate. On another occasion he jumped into
+the hospital pond with his pipe in his mouth, declaring he was on fire.
+I dare not send him to England without an escort, for he would do
+himself some injury. As to the other British lunatic, he has not spoken
+for five weeks. I do not know what is to be done."
+
+Neither did I, for I was not then aware of the patient's true condition,
+and had no desire to "butt in." They had lived for several months among
+the other madmen in hospital, and I thought it probable that they had
+really lost their reason.
+
+The lunatics' ward was a terrifying place. My experience of it, although
+limited to a few hours, was enough to last a lifetime. In order to
+secure drugs for "doping" sentries I complained of severe insomnia one
+day, and was sent to the mental specialist. While waiting for him, I
+noticed that one of the British lunatics was regarding me with
+unblinking furious eyes, while the other was praying--apparently for the
+souls of the damned. The Greek financier was singing softly to himself,
+and applauding himself. There is something very alarming about madness.
+One feels suddenly and closely what a narrow margin divides us from a
+world of terror. Their souls stand forlornly by their bodies, knocking
+at the door of intelligence.
+
+When the mental specialist arrived, I was seized by grave alarm. What if
+he should find me insane? . . .
+
+He held up a finger, tracing patterns in the air, and told me to watch
+it closely. While I watched him, he watched me.
+
+"The moving finger writes," I thought, "and having writ . . ."
+
+"I can see your finger perfectly," I protested nervously.
+
+"Far from it," said the enthusiastic specialist. "You are not following
+it with your eyes."
+
+"I am--indeed I am," said I, squinting at his fat forefinger.
+
+"I am told you cannot sleep," continued my interlocutor. "You seem to me
+to be suffering from nervous exhaustion."
+
+"A little sleeping draught . . ." I suggested.
+
+"I ought to observe you for a few days," he answered.
+
+"Not here?" I quavered.
+
+"Yes, here."
+
+"But I do not like the--other lunatics," said I, in a small voice.
+
+Eventually, to my great delight, I was allowed to remain where I was,
+and was given (as reward for the danger I had endured) several cachets
+of bromide and a few tablets of trional.
+
+I returned in triumph to my ward, and Robin and I laid our heads
+together. With the drugs we now possessed it would be possible to send
+our sentries to sleep when we were moved from hospital, if the person
+who was making plans for us to be taken on board a Black Sea steamer
+failed to communicate in time. But the question now arose as to how much
+of these drugs was suitable for the Turkish constitution. The object was
+to administer a sleeping draught, not a fatal dose. If we were
+transferred from Haidar Pasha we knew we should be sent for a time to
+the garrison camp of Psamattia (a suburb of Constantinople on the
+European side) and our intention was to inveigle our attendants into
+having lunch during our journey there, and ply them with Pilsener beer,
+suitably prepared, until they were somnolent and unsuspicious enough to
+make it feasible to bolt.
+
+Neither the bromide nor the trional could be tasted in cocoa or coffee,
+we discovered, so one evening, I regret to say, I carried out an
+experiment on a wounded patient, who was otherwise quite fit, although
+rather sleepless, by giving him a cachet of bromide and a tablet of
+trional in a cup of cocoa. In about half an hour his eyelids began to
+flicker, and he was soon sleeping like a lamb. Next morning he
+complained of a slight headache. Should he chance to read these lines I
+hope he will accept my apologies. _A la guerre comme a la guerre._
+
+So now we had the beginning of a second plan, in case the box business
+_via_ the Black Sea failed. But, in the event of escaping during our
+journey to Psamattia, we had no very clear idea of where to hide. That
+there were Greek and Jewish quarters in Galata and in Pera we knew, and
+also in the northern part of Stamboul, but the chances of detection in
+any of these localities were great, especially as we had no disguises at
+the time. There remained a possibility of hiding in the ruins of recent
+fires, but it was difficult to see how we were to live there. On the
+whole the Black Sea trip seemed to offer the most favourable
+opportunities of success. But to carry it out, we had to wait, and wait,
+and still to wait, until we heard from our agent again. And eventually
+the time came when we could wait no longer. . . .
+
+A week or two is nothing in Turkey, but unfortunately we had attracted a
+certain amount of undesirable attention in hospital by our popular
+supper-parties and reputed wealth. There was also a Bulgarian nurse who
+had an uncanny intuition about our intentions. She told the visiting
+doctor that two other nurses were in the habit of bringing us brandy.
+She also said we were both quite well and had never in fact been ill at
+all. The latter statement was true, but the former I can only attribute
+to pique, the brandy having come from other sources. However, this did
+not affect the fact that we were politely but firmly told that we had
+greatly benefited by our stay in hospital. This was equivalent to a
+notice of dismissal. We would have to go. Thereupon we both instantly
+pulled very long faces, and went to see the ear and nose specialist. He
+was our one hope of being allowed to stay on.
+
+While waiting for an interview, I had an opportunity of seeing an
+eminent army surgeon at work on the Turkish soldiers. Let me preface
+this description by emphasising the fact that he _was_ eminent. He was
+no rough bungler, but a clever practitioner, well known for his
+professional and human sympathy. This is the scene I saw.
+
+The doctor sat on a high stool, by the window, with a round reflector
+over his right eye. A glass table beside him was strewn with
+instruments. A lower stool seated his victims. In his hand he held a
+thing like a small glove-stretcher. Behind him two young assistants
+stood, looking like choir boys who had been fighting, in their robes of
+blood-stained white. The room was full of miserable shivering soldiers.
+
+A deaf old man takes the vacant seat in front of the doctor. The
+glove-stretcher darts into his ear. A question is asked. The old man
+gibbers in reply. Glove-stretcher darts into the other ear. Another
+question. More gibbering. Both his ears are soundly boxed, and he is
+sent away. The next is a goitre case, too unpleasant for description.
+Suddenly the attendants come forward, and pull off all his clothes. The
+doctor removes the reflector from his right eye, and stares for a moment
+at the ghastly skinny shape with a sack hanging from its throat. Then he
+dictates a prescription to one of the attendants, and seizes the next
+soldier. Prescription and clothes are thrown at the naked man, who walks
+out shivering, holding his apparel in his arms. Meanwhile another victim
+is already trembling on the stool. This man trembles so violently that
+he falls down in a faint. The attendants cuff him back to consciousness.
+Painfully he gets up and tries to face the instrument again. But as the
+glove-stretcher is being inserted into his nostril, he turns the colour
+of weak tea and again silently collapses. The doctor does not give him a
+second look. One of the attendants drags his limp body to a corner,
+while another patient takes the seat in front of the doctor. After a few
+more cases have been examined, the two attendants return to the
+unconscious man in the corner, drag him back to the doctor and hold his
+lolling head to the light, while the glove-stretcher does its work. Then
+he is pulled away, like a dummy from an arena, to the door of the
+consulting room, where (and here I confess I expected a scene) a woman
+awaited him. But she seemed to consider it all in the day's work.
+Perhaps poor Willie was subject to fainting fits. . . .
+
+I knew I would not faint, but I cannot say I took my turn on that seat
+with a light heart. The surgeon was alarmingly sudden, and already the
+room looked like a shambles.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+To my relief, he used a new glove-stretcher.
+
+"Slightly deflected septum," he pronounced, and his diagnosis was later
+confirmed in London.
+
+"I hurt my nose boxing," I explained conversationally, "and cannot now
+breathe through it. I would like to stay----"
+
+"Can't stay here." he said instantly and incisively; "no time to deal
+with your case."
+
+"But I can't breathe through my nose."
+
+"Breathe through your mouth," he suggested kindly, but a little coldly.
+
+Now, it is impossible to "wangle" a man who sits over you with a
+reflecting mirror screwed into his right eye. I vanished with suitable
+thanks.
+
+Robin had better luck with his ear. He could have stayed on in hospital
+and would very likely have been invalided back to England eventually.
+But he absolutely refused to exchange the comfortable security of a
+bodily affliction for the vivider joys of escape. In spite of my advice
+to stay in hospital, he decided, to my great delight, that we would try
+our luck together.
+
+All hope of remaining in hospital was now at an end.
+
+That evening at sunset we were in the garden, looking across the blue
+waters of the Marmora to the mosques and minarets of old Stamboul,
+flushed with the loveliest tints of pink.
+
+It was the last evening but one of Ramazan. To-morrow the crescent of
+the new moon would appear over the dome of San Sofia, as a sign to all
+that the fast had ended, and the time of rejoicing come. Between that
+moon and the next moon an unknown future lay before us. And whatever our
+fate, it was sure to be something exciting.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  OUR FIRST ESCAPE
+
+
+Our crossing from Haidar Pasha to the garrison camp at Psamattia was a
+tame affair. Early in the day we had made up our minds that it would be
+unwise to escape, as well as unkind to our indulgent sentries: unwise,
+because we realised that if we bolted blindly from a restaurant, we
+would probably be caught at the first lodging-house at which we tried to
+gain admission; and unkind because, in common chivalry, we decided that
+our sentries were too trustful to be drugged.
+
+Our day, therefore, was spent in seeing the sights of Pera, gossiping
+over a cocktail bar, purchasing some illicit maps under cover of a large
+quantity of German publications, and generally learning the lie of the
+land. But it might be indiscreet even at this distance of time to
+describe in too great detail the sources from which we obtained our
+information. One name, however--like King Charles' head with Mr.
+Dick--will keep coming into this book. I cannot keep it out, because it
+is impossible to think of my escape and escapades without thinking of
+the gallant lady who made them possible.
+
+Miss Whitaker, as she then was (she is now Lady Paul), knew something
+about all the escapes which took place in Turkey, and a great deal about
+a great many of them. Against every kind of difficulty from foes, and
+constant discouragement from friends[6] she boldly championed the cause
+of our prisoners through the dark days of 1916 and 1917. She visited the
+sick in hospital, she carried plum puddings to our men working at San
+Stefano, she was a never-failing source of sympathy and encouragement.
+She sent messages for us, and wrote letters, and lent us money and
+clothes. She was the good angel of the English at Constantinople, a
+second--and more fortunate--Miss Cavell.
+
+And she was the _Deus ex machina_ of my escapes. Having said this, I
+will say one thing more. I cannot here put down one-tenth of the daring
+work that Lady Paul did for me and others. The reason may be obvious to
+the reader; at any rate it is binding on me to say far less than I would
+wish.
+
+On reaching the prisoners' camp at Psamattia, our first object was to
+get in touch with her whom we had already heard of as the guardian
+spirit of prisoners. With this object in view, we asked to be allowed to
+attend Sunday service at the English church. Religious worship, we
+pointed out, should not be interfered with, further than the necessities
+of war demanded. After some demur the Commandant agreed, and accordingly
+we went to church. Here it was[7] that we met our guardian angel for the
+first time. She trembled visibly when we mentioned our plans for escape,
+and I thought (little knowing her) that we had been rash to speak so
+frankly.
+
+"I strongly advise delay," she whispered--"but I will meet you again at
+the gardens in Stamboul in two days' time--four o'clock. I'll be reading
+a----"
+
+"_Haide, effendim, haide, haide_," said our sentry, and her last words
+were lost.
+
+Further conversation was impossible, but the forty-eight hours which
+followed were vivid with anticipation.
+
+How were we to manage to get to the gardens of the Seraglio? Would we
+meet her? Could we talk to her? Would she have a plan? . . .
+
+On the day appointed, Robin and I complained of toothache, and asked to
+be allowed to go into the city to see the dentist. We were at once
+granted permission.
+
+From the dentist's to the Seraglio garden was only a step, but we were
+four hours too early as yet to keep the rendezvous. However, a large
+lunch, in which our sentries shared, smoothed the way for a little
+shopping excursion into Pera. Here, amongst other things, we bought some
+black hair dye, which completed our arrangements for escape. Other
+paraphernalia, such as jack-knives, twenty fathoms of rope, maps,
+compasses, sand-shoes, chocolate and "dope," we had already acquired.
+Nothing now remained but to find a hiding place, when once we had
+escaped.
+
+At about three o'clock we were sitting in a cafe, eating ices, with our
+complacent sentries, who had every reason to be complacent for they had
+been sumptuously fed, as well as liberally tipped. They were quite
+willing to do anything in reason, and nothing could have been more
+natural than a stroll in the Seraglio gardens.
+
+But just then Robin began to get "Spanish 'flu," which was raging in the
+city. The symptoms were as sudden as they were unmistakable. Violent
+shivering, giddiness, weakness--all the ills that flesh is heir to,
+waylaid him at this vital juncture. He was completely incapable of
+action.
+
+There was no help for it. I left him shaking and shivering in the cafe,
+in charge of one of our two sentries, and, after a little persuasion
+and some palaver (during the course of which another bank-note changed
+hands) I induced the other sentry to accompany me for a stroll. Unless
+we walked in the gardens, I assured him, we should both fall ill with
+the deadly contagion of my friend. Nothing but fresh air and iced beer
+could avert that fever. On the way, therefore, we stopped for a glass
+and I managed to drop a small dose of potassium bromide into the
+sentry's mug before it was given to him.
+
+A little before four the sentry and I were smoking cigarettes on a seat
+in the Seraglio gardens quite close to the Stamboul entrance gate.
+
+It was a hot day, with thunder-clouds hanging low. Toilers of the city
+passed us fanning themselves. Turkish officers had pushed back their
+heavy fur fezzes, and civilians wore handkerchiefs behind theirs. German
+ladies panted loudly, and even the _hanoums_ appeared to be a little
+jaded: their small feet and great eyes, that so often twinkle in the
+streets, had grown dull with the oppression of the day. Small wonder my
+sentry nodded.
+
+Presently, with a walk that no one could mistake, a tall and slim figure
+entered, dressed in white serge coat and skirt. I watched her, on the
+opposite footpath, strolling down the shady avenue with an insouciant
+grace. She held a novel and a little tasselled bag in her right hand.
+She sat down some two hundred yards away, and began reading calmly and
+coolly, apparently quite unconscious of the feverish world about her.
+
+With a hasty glance at my sentry, I rose and walked very slowly away. He
+woke at once, and followed. I stopped to look at some flowers, yawned,
+lit another cigarette and said to the sentry that it was too hot to
+walk. I intended to sit for a little in the shade on the opposite side
+of the road, and then we would go back to join our friend at the cafe.
+
+We meandered across the road, and I sank into a seat beside the guardian
+angel. There was no room for the sentry, so he obligingly retired into
+the shrubbery behind.
+
+Without taking her eyes from her novel, she began by saying I was not to
+look at her, and that I was to speak very low, looking in the opposite
+direction.
+
+She then asked where my companion was, and on hearing he had the 'flu,
+she told me that she also had been attacked by it at the very moment
+that we had spoken to her at church, and that it was only with
+difficulty she had been able to keep the rendezvous to-day. I tried to
+thank her for coming, but she kept strictly to business, and
+concentrated our conversation to bare facts. Her news ranged from the
+world at war, to plans for Robin and me, in vivid glimpses of
+possibility. She covered continents in a phrase, and dealt with the
+plans of two captives in terse but sympathetic comment. When she had
+told me what she wanted to say, she opened her small bag and took out a
+piece of paper, rolled up tight, which she flicked across to me without
+a moment's hesitation.
+
+"You had better go now," she said.
+
+But my heart was brimming over with things unsaid.
+
+"I simply cannot thank----" I began to stammer.
+
+"Don't!" said she, to the novel on her knees.
+
+And so, with no salute to mark the great occasion, I left her. Neither
+of us had seen the other's face.
+
+Here I must apologise for purposely clouding the narrative. The plans I
+made are only public so far as they concern myself.
+
+On rejoining Robin, I found him palpitant and perturbed. The fever was
+at its height and he ought to have been in bed. Yet it was urgently
+necessary that evening, before returning, to make certain investigations
+in the native quarter of the city. How to do this without attracting the
+notice of the two sentries, perspiring but still perceptive, was a
+matter of great concern to me. I thought of saying that I was going to
+buy medicine for Robin, but in that case one of the sentries (probably
+Robin's, for my own had grown very somnolent with beer and bromide)
+would certainly accompany me. Then I bethought me of going to wash my
+hands in a place behind the cafe and slipping out of a back door. But
+there was no back door, and Robin's sentry had followed me to the
+wash-place, and stood stolidly by the door until I came out.
+
+I sat down again, thinking and perspiring furiously,[8] and ordered
+more beer. But this time I failed to manipulate the bromide. Robin's
+sentry saw me with the packet in my hand and asked me what it was.
+
+"It is a medicine for reducing fat," said I, and of course after this I
+had to keep the drugged beer for myself. But the sedative did no harm.
+After sipping for some minutes I had a happy thought.
+
+There was a particular brand of cigarettes which were only obtainable at
+a few shops in Constantinople. I asked the waiter if he had them. He had
+not.
+
+"I must have a packet," I said, standing up--"there is a shop just down
+the street where I can get them."
+
+And without taking my hat or stick (as a proof of the innocence of my
+intentions) I strolled out of the cafe.
+
+The sentries did not follow. It was too hot.
+
+I rushed down the crowded thoroughfare as if all the hounds of heaven
+were on my trail. I fled past policemen, dodged a tram, bolted up a
+side-street, and arrived gasping at the doorway I sought. After a hasty
+survey of the locality, so as to identify it again at need, I rushed
+back to the restaurant, buying a box of Bafra-Madene cigarettes on the
+way. Robin was still shivering; the sentries were mopping their large
+faces. All was well. Our work was done.
+
+Trying not to look triumphant, I got Robin into a cab, and we drove back
+to Psamattia camp.
+
+During the next few days I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not so Robin, who
+was grappling with his fever. Later, however, when he was convalescent,
+we used to go down to the seashore together to bathe. In the evening, we
+used to sup off lobsters at a restaurant on the beach. In the water one
+felt almost free once more, and in the restaurant, when one was not
+gambling "double or quits" with the lobster-merchant as to whether we
+should pay him two pounds for his lobster or nothing at all, we were
+talking politics with other diners. Those days of Robin's convalescence
+were delightful. The moon was near its full, which is the season when
+lobsters ought to be eaten, and the climate was perfect, and our hopes
+were high.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Psamattia is one of the most westerly suburbs of Stamboul. From it, a
+maze of tortuous streets lead to the railway terminus of Sirkedji, and
+the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn. On the eastern side of the
+Golden Horn lie the European quarters of Galata and Pera. From our camp
+at Psamattia to the house where we intended to hide was a distance of
+five miles, and there were at least two police posts on the way. But
+with our hair dyed black (we had already effected this transformation,
+and it is astonishing how it changes one's appearance) and fezzes on our
+heads, we trusted to pass unnoticed as Greeks.
+
+Our plan had a definite and limited objective. We wanted to escape by
+night from Psamattia and hide in Constantinople. Once in hiding, we
+trusted to going by boat to Russia, or else going with brigands to the
+Mediterranean coast, where our patrols might pick us up. But the first
+object was to get away from the camp. Until this was achieved it was
+almost impossible to make definite arrangements. At first we had thought
+that it would be an easy matter to give our sentries the slip when we
+were out shopping. But when it came to the point, we felt scruples about
+bolting from men we had bribed and wheedled so often. All's fair in love
+and war, but yet if it could be avoided we did not want to abuse their
+trust in us.
+
+There remained the alternative of escaping by night from the house where
+we were interned. But when Robin had become fit enough to try (and of
+course he was all agog to be off at the first possible moment) we found
+the guards were more alert than we thought.
+
+Our situation was roughly this: We were housed in the Armenian
+Patriarchate, next to the Psamattia Fire Brigade, and there were
+sentries in every street to which access was possible, by craft or by
+climbing. The window of our room, which was directly over the doorway
+where the main guard lived, looked out on to a narrow street, across
+which there was another house, inhabitated by Russian prisoners of war.
+At first we thought it might be possible to pretend to go to the Russian
+house, and, while casually crossing the street, to mingle with the
+passers-by, and melt away unnoticed in the crowd. We tried this plan,
+but it was no good. The guards on our doorway were alert, and followed
+our every movement. . . . To slip out with the Armenian funerals which
+used to go through our gateway was another project doomed to
+failure. . . . To get into the Armenian church, on the night before a
+burial, remove the occupant of a coffin and so pass out next morning in
+the centre of the funeral procession, was an idea which excited us for a
+time. But the melodrama we had planned could not be executed, because
+the church was locked and guarded at night. . . . To climb out of the
+back window of the Russian house also proved impossible, because a
+sentry stood outside it always. . . . Every point was watched. Two
+sentries armed with old Martini rifles (of archaic pattern but
+unpleasantly big bore) were posted directly below our window. Two more
+similarly equipped were opposite, at the door of the Russian house. One
+man with a new rifle was behind the Russian house. Two more were behind
+ours, and one was in a side street. There were also men on duty at the
+entrance to the Fire Brigade.
+
+After considering all sorts of methods we decided on a plan whose chief
+merit was its seeming impossibility. No one would have expected us to
+try it.
+
+Our idea was to climb out of our window at night, and by crossing some
+ten foot of wall-face, to gain the shelter of the roof of the next door
+house. This roof was railed by a parapet, behind which we could crouch.
+Along it we would creep, until we reached a cross-road down the street.
+Here we would slip down a rope to the pavement, and although we would be
+visible to at least five sentries during our descent, it seemed probable
+that no particular sentry would consider himself responsible for the
+cross-roads, which was beyond their beat.
+
+To climb out of a window set in a blank wall, about thirty feet above a
+busy street where four sentries stood, did not seem a reasonable thing
+to do. But the wall was not as impassable as it seemed. Two little
+ledges of moulding ran along it, under our window-sill, so that we had a
+narrow yet sufficient foothold and handhold until we reached the roof of
+the adjoining house. And although we would be visible during our
+precarious transit of the wall-face, we knew that people rarely look up
+above their own height, and rarely look for things they don't expect.
+
+It was the night of the twenty-seventh of July, when a bright full moon
+rode over the sea behind our house, that we decided to make the attempt.
+
+The first point was to get out of the window without being seen. . . . A
+Colonel of the Russian Guards, a little man with a great heart,
+volunteered to help us. Directly we extinguished the lights in our room,
+he was to engage the sentries at the door of the opposite house, where
+he lived, in an animated conversation, keeping them interested, even by
+desperate measures if need be, until our first ten yards of climbing was
+successfully accomplished.
+
+After a cordial good-bye, he left us. We took off our boots and slung
+them round our necks, drank a stirrup cup to our success, roped
+ourselves together, coiled the remainder of the rope round our waists,
+stuffed our pockets and knapsacks with our escaping gear, and then blew
+out our lamp, as if we were going to bed. Crouched under the window-sill
+we waited. . . . The sentries below us were sitting on stools in the
+street. The two men opposite were lolling against the doorpost, and the
+moon, rising behind our house, while still leaving the street in shadow,
+had just caught their faces, so that their every eyelash was visible. To
+them came the little Colonel, and only the top of his cap reached the
+moonlight. We heard his cheery voice. We saw both sentries looking down,
+presumably helping themselves to his cigarettes.
+
+That waiting moment was very tense. An initial failure would have been
+deplorable, yet many things made failure likely. At such times as these,
+the confidence of one's companion counts for much, and I shall never
+forget Robin's bearing. Anyone who has been in similar circumstances
+will know what I mean. He went first out of the window. I followed an
+instant later. . . . And once the first step was taken, once my feet
+were on that two-inch ledge and my hands clung to the upper strip, the
+complexion of things altered completely. Anxiety vanished, leaving
+nothing but a thrill of pleasure. One was master of one's fate.
+
+At one moment we were in view of four sentries (two at our door and two
+opposite), a Turkish officer who had come to take the air at our
+doorway, and several passers-by in the street. But no one looked up. No
+one saw the two men, only five yards away, who clambered slowly along
+the string-course, like flies on a wall.
+
+After gaining the roof of the next house, we lay flat and breathless
+behind the parapet, and thanked God we had succeeded in--not making
+fools of ourselves, anyway.
+
+The parapet was lower than we thought, and in order to get the advantage
+of its cover it was necessary to remain absolutely prone in the gutter
+of the roof. In this position, from ten o'clock till half past eleven,
+we wriggled and wriggled along the house-tops, past a dead cat and other
+offensive objects, until at last we had covered the distance. Once,
+during this stalk, my rope got hitched up on a nail, and I had to
+wriggle back to free it. And once, having raised myself to take a look
+round, one of the sentries on the Russian house ran out into the street
+and started making a tremendous noise. I don't know what it was about,
+but it alarmed me very much, and condemned us to marble immobility for a
+time.
+
+At last, however, we reached the end of our wriggle. But here a new
+difficulty confronted us. Directly overlooking the part of the roof from
+which we contemplated our descent, and less than ten yards away, an
+officer of the Psamattia Fire Brigade sat at an open window, looking
+anxiously up and down the street, as if expecting someone to keep an
+appointment. His window was on a level with us. So intently did he stare
+that I thought he had seen us. But we lay dead-still behind the parapet,
+and it became apparent, as time passed and he still stood disconsolate
+by the window, that we were not the objects of his languishing
+regard. . . . And meanwhile the moon--the kindly old moon that sees so
+much--was creeping up the sky. Soon she would flood us with her
+radiance. Even a love-sick officer of the Fire Brigade could not fail to
+notice us across the narrow street, lit by the limelight of all the
+universe. For an hour this annoying Romeo kept watch, while we discussed
+the situation in tiny whispers, and cursed feminine unpunctuality. But
+at last, just as we had determined to "let go the painter" and take our
+chance, he began to yawn and stretch and look towards his bed, which we
+could see at the further end of his room. "You are tired of waiting: she
+isn't worth it!" I sent in thought-wave across the street. He seemed to
+hesitate, then he yawned again, and just as our protecting belt of
+shadow had narrowed to a yard, he gave up his hopes of Juliet, and
+retired.
+
+That was our moment.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE AT PSAMATTIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+We stood up, and made the rope fast to a convenient ring in the parapet.
+Traffic in the street had ceased. The sentries were huddled in their
+coats, for it was a chilly summer night. Up street, a dog was yapping,
+and its voice seemed to stab the silence. Before stepping over the
+parapet I took a last look at the world I left and thanked God.
+
+The waiting was over. In two seconds' time we should have gained
+freedom, or a slug from some sentry's rifle.
+
+It took two seconds to slip down thirty feet of rope, and two seconds is
+a long time when your liberty, if not your life, is at stake. I half
+kicked down the sign-board of a shop in my descent, and Robin, who
+followed, completed the disaster. In our haste, we had cut our hands
+almost to the bone, and had made noise enough to wake the dead.
+
+Yet no one stirred. We were both in the street, and no one had moved.
+
+After two and a half years of captivity we were free men once more. The
+slothful years had vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Can you realise
+the miracle, liberty-loving reader, that passes in the mind of a man who
+thus suddenly realises his freedom? . . .
+
+I don't know what Robin thought, for we said nothing. We lit cigarettes
+and strolled away. But inside of me, the motors of the nervous system
+raced.
+
+The only other danger, in our hour and a half's walk to our destination,
+was being asked for passports by some policeman. In our character as
+polyglot mechanics, whenever we passed anyone, I found it a great
+relief to make some such remark as:
+
+  Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein,
+  Fest steht and treu die Wacht am Rhein.
+
+But Robin, who could not understand my German, paid little heed.
+
+Only once we did think we were likely to be recaught. At about one in
+the morning, as we were passing the Fatih mosque, we heard a rattle on
+the cobbles behind us. A carriage was being galloped in our direction.
+It might well contain some of the Psamattia garrison. We doubled into
+some ruins, and lay there, while the clatter grew louder and louder.
+
+A few wisps of cloud crossed the moon, that had reached her zenith.
+Their silent shadows moved like ghosts across the desolation of the
+city. A cat was abroad. She saw us, and halted, with paw uplifted and
+blazing eyes.
+
+Then the carriage passed, empty, with a drunken driver. It rattled away
+into the night, and we emerged, and took our way through the streets of
+old Stamboul, under the chequered shade of vines.
+
+[Footnote 6: This applies in no way to the Americans, who did everything
+possible for our men before they left Constantinople. Their assistance
+was always of the most prompt and practical nature. It may be invidious
+to mention names in this light account of adventure, but I cannot
+refrain from giving myself the pleasure of saying how grateful I am to
+Mr. Hoffman Phillips, of the American Embassy. His name, as also the
+name of his chief, Mr. Morgenthau, is indissolubly connected with our
+early prisoners. I wish to thank him from the bottom of my heart, and I
+know many of all ranks who will join with me in this--far too
+meagre--tribute to his activities and ability.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Let no one think the clergyman in charge aided or abetted
+our secular efforts to escape. On the contrary, on a later occasion,
+when Robin, as a poor and distressed prisoner hiding from the Turks,
+endeavoured to find sanctuary for a few hours in the church, he was
+expelled therefrom, so that our enemies should not complain that the
+House of God was used for anything but worship.]
+
+[Footnote 8: During the afternoon I lost over seven pounds in weight.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  A CITY OF DISGUISES
+
+
+We knocked softly at the door of the house that was to be our home, and
+then waited, flattened in the shadow below it, quite prepared for the
+worst. It was then four o'clock in the morning. It seemed too much to
+hope that we would be welcome.
+
+But we were. The door opened cautiously about one inch, and two little
+faces were seen, low down the crack. Behind them, someone held a light.
+
+Then the door was flung wide, and we saw on the stairs a whole family of
+friendly people, male and female, old and young, all in night dress, and
+all with arms outstretched in rapturous greeting. We might have been
+Prodigal Sons returning, instead of two strangers whose presence would
+be a source of continual danger.
+
+Hyppolite and Athene, the twins, aged eight, who had first peeped at us,
+now took us each by the hand, and led us upstairs.
+
+"The last escaped prisoner we had here was a forger," said Hyppolite to
+us.
+
+"He was a friend of father's," added Athene over her shoulder, "and he
+escaped from prison about six weeks ago. He was afraid that the police
+would find his tools, so he threw them all into our cistern. They are
+there now."
+
+We reached the top floor, and were shown by the twins into an apartment
+containing a double bed with a stuffy canopy of damask.
+
+"This is the family bedroom," they said.
+
+"And where are we to sleep?" I asked.
+
+"Here," said Themistocle, the proud owner of the house. "My sister and I
+and the twins were using the bed until your arrival, but now we will
+sleep in the passage."
+
+"The passage?" I echoed. "Haven't you any other beds, and were you all
+four using this one?"
+
+"Yes, yes. The other rooms are full of lodgers. There are three officers
+of the Turkish army here at present. But they won't disturb you, because
+they are hiding too."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" said I, sitting on the bed--"but your sister can't sleep in
+the passage, can she?"
+
+"Certainly, she's quite used to that sort of thing. It's safer also, in
+case the police come."
+
+"I know all the police," said Athene, "even when they are not in
+uniform; I can recognise them by their boots."
+
+"And we are always on the look-out for them," added Hyppolite. "If the
+police come to search the house you will have to get into the cistern."
+
+"Where the forger threw his tools," explained Athene.
+
+Coffee and cigarettes were produced, and ointment for our lacerated
+hands. We were made to feel quite at home. . . . The family stayed and
+talked to us until dawn broke. They thoroughly appreciated the story of
+the escape, and clapped their hands with glee at the idea of the Turks'
+amazement when they discovered that we had vanished, leaving no trace
+behind us.
+
+"They will never find the rope," said Themistocle, "because the
+shopkeeper over whose shop it is will certainly cut it down and hide it,
+for fear of being asked questions."
+
+"And now we must thank the Blessed Saints for your escape," said an old
+lady who had not previously spoken.
+
+She went to a glass cupboard, opened it, and lit two candles. A scent of
+rose-leaves and incense came from the shrine, which contained oranges
+and ikons and Easter eggs and a large family Bible.
+
+For a moment or two we all stood silent.
+
+Then----
+
+Just when I was expecting a prayer, the old lady blew out the candles
+and shut up the cupboard and crossed herself. The thanksgiving was over,
+and we dispersed with very cordial good-nights. I think Themistocle
+wanted to kiss us, but we felt we had been through trials enough for the
+time and refused to offer even one cheek.
+
+The family retired to the passage and settled down to rest with squeaks
+and giggles, while Robin and I, after thanking God for all His mercies,
+with very humble and grateful hearts, threw ourselves down on the bed,
+too exhausted to undress, and slept the sleep of free men.
+
+Next instant, it seemed to me, although in reality two hours had
+elapsed, we were awakened by the twins, who looked on us as their
+especial charges, and thought us tremendous fun.
+
+"Time to get up," they said excitedly. "The house might be searched at
+any minute."
+
+Instantly we were afoot.
+
+"Where are the police?" I asked.
+
+"There is a detective standing at the corner of our street," said
+Hyppolite.
+
+"And they often come to see if all our lodgers are registered!" added
+his sister.
+
+We bundled our maps, compasses, and other belongings into a towel, and
+staggered downstairs, with fear and sleep battling for mastery in our
+minds.
+
+But in the pantry, we found the seniors of the household quite
+unconcerned. There was no imminent danger of a search. . . . On the
+other hand, there was the immediate prospect of breakfast.
+
+A saucepan was actually being buttered (and butter was worth its weight
+in gold) to make us an omelette. By now we had been thoroughly stirred
+from sleep, and realised how hungry we were. I forget how many omelettes
+we ate, or how much butter we used, but I think that that charming
+breakfast cost a five-pound note, or thereabouts.
+
+When it was over, an engaging sense of drowsiness began to creep over me
+again, but the twins were adamant.
+
+"You must practise getting into the cistern," said Hyppolite.
+
+"Like the forger did," chimed in Athene--"and then you must arrange a
+hiding-place for your things."
+
+The worst of it was, that their suggestions were so practical. Obviously
+it was our duty to at once take all precautions.
+
+I consequently took off my clothes, and removing the lid of the cistern,
+I was let down through a hole in the floor into the waters below. In my
+descent I re-opened the wounds in my hands, and it was in no very
+cheerful mood that I found myself in darkness, with water up to my
+shoulders. I moved cautiously about, trying to imagine our feelings if
+fate drove us to this chilly and conventional hiding-place while
+detectives were conducting a search for us above. Then I barked my foot
+on something hard, and stooping down through the water I picked up a
+large block of pumicestone, which was doubtless the forger's engraving
+die. Something scurried on an unseen ledge; a rat no doubt. I felt I had
+seen enough of the cistern. Groping my way back to the lid, my fingers
+touched a little thing that cracked under them, and instantly I felt a
+stinging pain. Whether it was a beetle or a sleepy wasp I did not stop
+to inquire.
+
+"Lemme get out," I bleated through the hole in the floor. . . . "Robin,"
+I said, when I was safe once more, "if ever we are driven down there, we
+must take something to counteract the evil spirits."
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+All that morning we passed in the pantry, eating and dozing by snatches.
+
+Morning merged into afternoon, the afternoon lengthened into evening,
+and no policeman came. We were safe.
+
+At nightfall, after sending Hyppolite as a scout up the stairs to see
+that the other lodgers were not about, we ascended to our room again,
+and settled down definitely.
+
+Our stay, we then thought, might last several weeks, so as to give us
+leisure to weigh the reliability of the various routes and guides that
+offered. There was no particular hurry. The longer we stayed, the more
+likely the Turks would be to relax such measures as they had taken for
+our recapture.
+
+But we had reckoned without our host: the host of vermin. They were
+worse in this room than in any other place I have seen in Turkey, not
+excepting the lowest dungeons of the military prison, where they breed
+by the billion. Their voracity and vehemence made a prolonged stay
+impossible. Except for the first sleep of two hours, when exhaustion had
+made us insensible, we never thereafter had more than a single hour of
+uninterrupted rest.
+
+Throughout the long and stifling nights of our stay, Robin and I lay in
+the stately double bed, wondering wearily how any man or woman alive
+could tolerate the creatures that crawled over its mahogany-posts and
+swarmed over its flowered damask. Every three-quarters of an hour, one
+or other of us used to light a candle, and add to the holocaust of
+creatures we had already slain.
+
+"What hunting?" I used to ask sleepily.
+
+"A couple of brace this time, and a cub I chopped in covert," Robin
+would say.
+
+"That makes twenty-two couple up to date--and the time is 12.35 a.m."
+
+Then at one o'clock it was Robin's turn to ask what sport I had had.
+
+"A sounder broke away under your pillow," I reported. "Six rideable boar
+and six squeakers."
+
+Ugh!
+
+Those first days of our liberty were a trying time. To the external
+irritation of insects were added the mental anxieties of our situation.
+What, for instance, would happen to the twins if we were caught in that
+house? And, again, was Themistocle faithful? Would he be tempted by the
+reward offered for our recapture? At times we were not quite certain. He
+used to talk very gloomily about the risks and the cost of life.
+
+"Everyone is starving," he used to say thoughtfully--"even the
+policemen go hungry for bribes. A friend of mine, a policeman, said to
+me the other day: 'For the love of Allah find somebody for me to arrest.
+Among all the guilty and the innocent in this town, surely you can find
+somebody that we could threaten to arrest? Then we would share the
+proceeds.'"
+
+"What did you say to that?" I asked.
+
+"I said," he answered thoughtfully, "that I would do my best."
+
+"But what sort of man would you arrest?" I asked.
+
+"Any sort of man. A drunkard perhaps, if I saw one, or a rich man, if I
+dared."
+
+"Rich men are apt to be dangerous," said I meaningly.
+
+"I know. But what can one do?" he asked, spreading out his hands. "One
+must live!"
+
+"And let live," said I, thinking suddenly of the bugs, and wondering
+what Themistocle thought of them.
+
+It was then that I noticed his method of combating the household pets.
+
+Previously I had observed that the ends of his pyjamas (we always talked
+at night) were provided with strong tapes, which were tied close to his
+ankles; but the object of this fastening only became apparent when I
+noticed the excited throngs of insects on his elastic-sided boots. They
+could not get higher. They were balked of their blood. If he ever felt
+any discomfort, he merely tightened the tapes.
+
+After a careful study of Themistocle's psychology (which was so full of
+outlooks new to me that I never achieved more than a glimpse into the
+pages of his past) I came to the conclusion that he was implicitly to be
+trusted. In his frail frame there burned a spirit of adventure and a
+courage that might "step from star to star." His soul had been born to
+live in a great man, only somehow it had made a mistake and taken a
+tenement instead of a manor-house to live in. . . .
+
+I think sunset and sunrise were the pleasantest hours in our new abode.
+It was possible then to draw back the blinds without any danger of being
+seen, and enjoy the cool of the evening and the magnificent view which
+our situation afforded. Our house, although it stood in a side street,
+commanded a prospect of the upper end of the Golden Horn, as well as a
+view of one of the most populous thoroughfares of the town.
+
+We used to sit and gaze at the twilit city, until the creeping darkness
+overtook us.
+
+If circulation be a test of a city's vitality, then Constantinople was
+certainly at a low ebb. The pedestrians seemed to get nowhere. They were
+hanging about, waiting for something to happen. The whole town was
+dead-tired, unspeakably bored of life as it had to be lived under the
+Young Turks. Constantinople was getting cross. . . . Cross, like someone
+who was tired of adulation from the wrong person. Some trick of sea and
+sun give her this human quality of sex. Anyone who has lived for long
+in her houses must feel her personality. She is the courtesan of
+conquerors, but inherent in her is some witchcraft, by which she weakens
+those who hold her, so that they die and are utterly exterminated, while
+she remains with her fadeless and fatal beauty, an Eastern Lorelei
+beside the Bosphorus. . . . She sapped the strength of the Roman Empire,
+she overthrew the dominion of the Greeks, and now, after a period of
+fretful wedlock, she was shaking herself free from the Turk.
+
+Something was going to happen soon. One felt it in the air.
+
+What happened to us, was that it became necessary to draw the blinds and
+light our candle, and search for the pestilence that crept by night.
+Presently our meal arrived, which was always a cheerful interlude, but
+it was as short as it was sweet, for courses were few, with famine
+prices prevailing. Afterwards we continued our hunting till dawn.
+
+At dawn, when the chill of morning had sent our sated enemies to sleep,
+there was another truce from trouble. We used to draw back the blinds
+again and sit at the window.
+
+I used to watch the pale sun on the horizon, fighting the mist-forms
+that clung heavily to earth and sea, and I felt that in the
+world-consciousness a similar contest swayed. The old ideas of
+government were being caught by a light that was pale now, but soon to
+grow luminous--a radiance that would dispel the night of war, and show
+us a new world, intangible yet, but dimly sensed.
+
+In the dim alleys and side streets below, where balconies overhung,
+shutting out the dawn, what a weight of woe there was! Famine and fire,
+twin angels of destruction that lurked in every by-way of the city, were
+waiting to take their toll. And the war went on for caged and free,
+while some starved and others made fortunes, and some became generals
+and others corpses. And the end of these things was vanity. _Vanitas
+vanitatum._
+
+The minaret of a mosque was directly opposite to me. Under sway of the
+sanctuary and the hour, the voice of the _muezzin_ spoke to me in all
+its sincerity and unity of purpose. God was everywhere, all-pervasive,
+all-unseen, invisible only because He was so manifest. Evil of the night
+and glory of the dawn made His picture, the world. With new eyes I saw
+now this city grey with sin, and fresh with the promise of another day.
+
+From the house of that stern and simple faith that is the creed of
+one-fifth of the world, there came a sense of kinship with all the
+suffering under the sky. Reverence came to me also, and that brotherhood
+which is the message of the Great Teachers since time began. These
+thoughts were round me, a silent company, as I looked Mecca-wards, to
+the place of prayer. Then the heralds of the dawn alighted on the
+minaret, and their wings were amethyst and saffron. The night was over,
+and the _muezzin's_ long, exultant call to worship died down with the
+increasing light.
+
+Another day had begun.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Not many days and nights did we tarry in Themistocle's house. Robin
+decided to try his luck by land. After various inquiries, he made
+arrangements with a Greek boy to board a melon-boat bound for Rodosto.
+His idea was to make that port, and thence work his way to Enos, where
+he hoped to be picked up by our patrol-boats. After many adventures and
+perils by land and sea, and a great deal of bad luck, he was caught at
+the town of Malgara. So ended a very gallant attempt, which ought to be
+set down in detail by him.
+
+I can only describe his appearance when he left. His disguise was a
+matter of great difficulty, for he is so tall and so Saxon that he
+always attracted notice in an Eastern crowd. An Arab ragamuffin seemed
+the role best suited to him, and he accordingly exchanged his
+comparatively respectable clothes for a greasy old coat and a pair of
+repellent trousers. With a tattered fez well back on his head, and all
+his visible skin blackened with burnt cork, he looked an unspeakable
+scoundrel. But he was too villainous. He would have been immediately
+arrested for his appearance alone. A touch of genius, however, completed
+his make-up. . . . In his hands he carried a poor little bowl of curds
+and half a cucumber, which completely altered his ferocious air by
+adding the requisite touch of pathos. The edible emblems of innocence he
+carried transformed him completely into a sort of male Miss Muffet.
+
+No detective could have found heart to inquire where he was going. He
+was enough to make anyone cry.
+
+He left in a frightful hurry, for his boat was due to catch a certain
+tide, but we drank a stirrup cup to his success, and parted with much
+sadness on my side, not until the old lady before mentioned had lit a
+candle before the ikon of Saint Nicholas. . . .
+
+I was very sorry to see him go, but I was quite convinced (wrongly, as
+events proved) that the best chance of success lay in going to Russia.
+
+The little Colonel of the Russian Guards had told us before we escaped
+that he was likely to be soon repatriated (for he was a person of
+influence in the Caucasus), and I felt sure that I could arrange to go
+as his servant, if no better scheme presented itself in the meanwhile.
+But there were many possibilities in the "city of disguises."
+
+During my stay with Themistocle I had been learning history, as it is
+never written, but as it is most strangely lived by a people on the
+brink of dissolution and disaster. As an escaped prisoner I thought that
+delay in Constantinople--somewhere clean, however--would not be time
+wasted if one was in touch with the politics of the time. If the
+Russian scheme failed, there were other openings, by earth and air and
+water.
+
+But the first thing to do was to find a place where I could lay my head
+without getting it bitten.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The good angel of prisoners came to my assistance at this critical
+juncture in my affairs.
+
+"You must be disguised as a girl," said she--"I will buy you a wig at
+once."
+
+"But what about my figure?" I asked, "and my feet . . .?"
+
+"Some clothes were left with me at the beginning of the war," she
+answered, "which will fit you with the help of a tailor. And as to your
+shoes, your own will pass muster, with new bows. No one has had any
+proper shoes for ages here. But you will want--well, lots of other
+things."
+
+And I certainly _did_ want a lot, before I looked at all presentable.
+After very careful shaving, I began to splash about confidently at my
+toilet table. There was Vesuvian black for the eyebrows, _bistre_ for
+the eyelashes, _poudre violette_, rouge, carmine--more powder--more
+rouge--at last I showed my satisfied face to Miss Whitaker, who gave a
+cry of horror, and flatly refused to be seen in my company.
+
+There was nothing for it but to wash my face and start again.
+
+This time I succeeded in making myself presentable, although a blue
+streak of whisker seemed always slightly visible through the powder. The
+wig, however, helped matters greatly, and I arranged some ringlets on my
+shaven cheeks.
+
+The dressing-up was quite exciting. Silk and lace and whalebone,
+especially a lot of lace in front, was the basis on which I built. The
+foundations took some time in laying, but when finished I found to my
+delight that the coat and skirt belonging to Miss Whitaker's friend
+fitted my figure perfectly.
+
+A few details, invisible to my eyes, were quickly corrected, and I think
+that when I finally emerged, with large hat at a becoming angle, I did
+credit to my instructress.
+
+Gloves I had always to wear, of course, and a veil was advisable,
+chiefly to tone down my blinding beauty to the eyes of passers-by. Do
+what I would, however, I could not hide a certain artificiality in my
+appearance, which was most unfair to Miss Whitaker, considering that I
+was her companion. But I behaved as well as I possibly could.
+
+[Illustration: The Author as a German Governess]
+
+I learned how to walk in a ladylike fashion, and how to powder my nose
+in an engaging manner. My arms and legs had to be kept under various
+restraints. A mincing gait was soon acquired, but I found sitting still
+more awkward. My knees evinced an almost ineradicable tendency to cross
+themselves or sprawl, while my gloved forearms, to the last, felt as
+unwieldy as a baboon's. But everything I could I learned assiduously
+and in dead earnest, down to managing my veil, and patting my curls
+nicely in front of a looking-glass. It was so frightfully important not
+to make a false step.
+
+My only excuse for going about with Miss Whitaker at all was the
+complete success of the role for which she had so skilfully prepared me.
+Never for a moment was there any suspicion of my identity.
+
+On one occasion, in the early days of my disguise, when we were
+sight-seeing at Eyoub, some Turkish ladies stopped to talk to us. I
+remained silent, of course, but I watched them narrowly and came to the
+conclusion that they saw nothing amiss. My eyes, incidentally, were as
+well painted as theirs. Now, if two charming and worldly-wise _hanoums_
+cannot detect a flaw in one's form or features, it is unlikely that any
+mere male could be cleverer than they.
+
+The mere males, alas! were enthralled by my appearance. Once or twice an
+embarrassing situation was narrowly averted. The road behind the Pera
+Palace Hotel is dark, and we used to ascend it in fear and trembling.
+But although we were followed sometimes, no one ever presumed to speak
+to us.
+
+Miss Whitaker had found me by now a delightful roof, near the house in
+which I took my meals, and this place was free from all life smaller
+than a rat. Here I was able to make my plans in peace, with no fear of
+treachery, for, so cleverly had Miss Whitaker arranged matters, no one
+knew I was not a woman.
+
+As Mademoiselle Josephine, an eccentric German governess, who suffered
+from consumption (and therefore spoke very low and huskily) I used to
+pass my nights _a belle etoile_, after well-spent days in the docks or
+cafes, where my plans were maturing. The stars in their courses seemed
+to be on my side. No longer, as when a fretful prisoner, did I think
+their quiet shining was a reminder of man's minuteness in the schemes of
+God. I felt now that man could make his destiny. And when that destiny
+was shaped by hands such as those that helped me, the world was a
+beautiful place. Good angels were here on earth, at "our own
+clay-shuttered doors." . . .
+
+Two little girls, to whom I used to bring chocolates, used to come up in
+the evening and kiss my hand, wishing me good-night. They thought I was
+the most amusing governess they had ever met. Their mother, a kind old
+lady who offered me cough mixtures, must have thought me rather odd, but
+then she was prepared to make allowances for foreigners, especially in
+war-time. To have a reason for wishing to be inconspicuous was nothing
+unusual in those days, whether one was German, Jew, or Greek, or male or
+female.
+
+Of various opportunities that came my way, the most practical and
+attractive was that suggested by the Russian Colonel. His repatriation
+to the Caucasus was now only a matter of days. He had not only got his
+own passport, but also a passport for a servant. That servant was to be
+myself. In order to discuss plans, we found the safest rendezvous was
+the open-air cafe of the Petits Champs. This place was crowded with
+"fashionable" people, and although both he and Miss Whitaker were
+constantly shadowed by detectives there was nothing at all suspicious in
+their being seen at tea-time in the company of an elegantly dressed
+German lady.
+
+The German lady was obviously not as young as she tried to appear, but
+then there was nothing unusual about that. She was also rather _gauche_
+in her movements, but this again was not out of keeping with the part.
+
+"In a fortnight's time we will be having tea at Tiflis," the Russian
+Colonel used to say. "I will raise two regiments of cavalry and take
+them to kill the Bolsheviks. You shall be my adjutant."
+
+"With the greatest pleasure in the world, _mon Colonel_. But please do
+not speak so loud."
+
+"Ah, that _sacre_ detective. I had forgotten him. Soon we will not have
+to think of such things."
+
+"Yes, but at the present moment your own particular shadow is trying to
+listen to what you are saying," I remarked in low tones.
+
+At once the Colonel's voice assumed a softer note, and his green eyes
+began to melt with tenderness.
+
+"_Mais Josephine, ma petite, ecoutes donc, je t'adore. . . ._ There,
+he's passed. Everything is ready. I have got you a Russian soldier's
+uniform. You have only to put this on, and follow me on board when I
+go."
+
+"And if someone asks me who I am?"
+
+"You are my Georgian servant. And you can only speak Georgian. Just say
+this----"
+
+There followed a tongue-twisting sentence, which I tried to memorise.
+
+Meanwhile the band played, and people passed, and inquisitive eyes were
+turned in our direction.
+
+"That's a spy who knows me," Miss Whitaker would say. "_Encore une
+tasse, mademoiselle? Non?_ I think we ought to be going."
+
+"We'll settle the final details to-morrow," I whispered.
+
+"Right! Remember to let your beard grow. I couldn't have a smooth-faced
+orderly."
+
+"_Eh bien, mille mercis, Colonel_," said I, giving him my hand.
+
+He held it a moment, bowing, and looking inexpressible things.
+
+"_Ah, Josephine. . . ._"
+
+"_A demain, alors!_"
+
+And with a simper I left my gallant and dapper cavalier to pay the
+bill.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  RECAPTURED
+
+
+At five o'clock one morning Mlle. Josephine received a staggering note
+from the Russian Colonel to say that he had had to leave at a moment's
+notice for the Caucasus, under a Turkish guard, and that there was no
+prospect at all of his taking his dear Josephine with him.
+
+Thus my plan had failed. It was not the Colonel's fault, but it was
+annoying all the same. I had wasted both time and money, provisions and
+opportunities, and now I had to begin all over again.
+
+I decided that I would not continue in my disguise as a girl. It was too
+nerve-racking to begin with; and also, as a girl, I could not go down
+myself to the docks and arrange matters at first hand. I felt I must do
+something for myself. During the month that had elapsed Robin had been
+recaptured, other officers had escaped, the whole course of the war was
+changing, and here was I still _embusque_ in Constantinople.
+
+Something must be done, and, as usual, my good angel did it for
+me. . . . She bought me a small upturned moustache, spectacles,
+hair-dye, a second-hand suit, a stained white waistcoat which I
+ornamented with a large nickel gilt watch chain, a pair of old
+elastic-sided boots (price L7), an ebony cane with a silver top, and a
+bowler hat which I perched rakishly askew. I was a Hungarian mechanic,
+out of a job. I had lost my place at the munition factory near San
+Stefano. But I was not down-hearted. My nails were oily and my
+antecedents doubtful, but I drank my beer and smoked my cigars and
+looked on life brightly through my spectacles.
+
+I did not avoid the Boche--in fact, I frequently drank beer with him.
+The non-Latin races are not inquisitive as a rule. They cared little
+whether I was Swiss or Dutch or Hungarian, and I frequently claimed all
+three nationalities. They did not even think it odd when, on one
+occasion, I said that I had been born in Scandinavia and later that I
+was a naturalised Hungarian, and later again (when a Jewish gentleman
+with military boots joined us, whom I recognised to be a Government
+informer, paid to pick up information) that I was really of Russian
+parentage and that I had a passport to this effect (which I showed to
+the company present) signed by Djevad Bey, the military commandant of
+Constantinople, permitting me to proceed to Russia and ordering that
+every facility should be given to me at the custom-house.
+
+This forged passport was a source of perplexity to me at the time, and
+later it was to be the cause of great discomfort. I had bought it for
+ten pounds from the gentleman whose pumicestone engraving die reposed
+at the bottom of the cistern. It was an ornate affair, duly stamped, and
+sealed, and signed with a Turkish flourish. But I could not bring myself
+to believe that it would get me through the passport office, the
+_douane_, and the medical station at the entrance to the Bosphorus. Some
+hitch would certainly have occurred.
+
+However, it impressed the company in the cafe. People generally take one
+at one's own valuation, and the few secret agents to whom I spoke
+obviously considered that I was not a likely person to be blackmailed.
+With the Greeks I was certainly popular. The seedy-smart polyglot youth
+who was so liberal with his cigars (which were rather a rarity then) and
+so fond of talking politics and drinking beer was a _persona grata_ in
+the circles he frequented. We talked much of revolution.
+
+"We will crucify the Young Turks," said a Greek to me one day, "and then
+eat them in little bits. We will----" His expressive hands suddenly
+paused in mid-gesture, and his mouth dropped open, but only for an
+instant. He had seen a detective enter. "We will continue to preserve
+our dignity and remain calm whatever happens," he concluded neatly.
+
+But calm the Greeks certainly were not.
+
+In the cellar of a German hotel in Pera the Greek proprietor displayed
+one night a collection of rusty swords and old revolvers which were the
+nucleus of the New Age of brotherly love, when the streets were to run
+with Turkish blood, and the Cross replace the Crescent in San Sophia. I
+was privileged to be present at this conclave of desperadoes. After
+swearing each other to eternal secrecy we sampled some of the contents
+of our host's cellar, and talked very big about what we were going to
+do. But our host, beyond dancing a hornpipe and declaring that he was
+going to murder everybody in the hotel (after they had paid their
+bills), propounded no very definite scheme.
+
+Out of this atmosphere of melodrama one emerged into the sombre, silent
+streets and went rather furtively home, feeling that there was something
+to be said for the Turks after all. But I need hardly say that no
+influential Greeks had a share in these proceedings: they were always on
+the side of moderation. One had been a fool to consort with fools.
+
+Behind the lattices of the harems it was said that Enver Pasha's day was
+done. The new Sultan had thrown him out of the palace, neck and crop.
+There was to be an inquiry into the means by which he had acquired huge
+farms round Constantinople--farms which were supposed to be purchased
+from the proceeds of a corner in milk that had killed many children. The
+Custodians of the Harem (and in Turkey these tall flat-chested
+individuals have positions of great power; the Chief of the White
+Custodians, for instance, is one of the high dignitaries of the Empire,
+and ranks with a Lord Chamberlain) had long been intriguing against the
+Committee and especially against the German element with Enver at its
+head. . . . The Sultan was high in popular favour, and a dramatic
+suicide in the main street of Pera, which lifted a corner of the curtain
+hiding the unrest behind the scenes at the Imperial Palace, became a
+nine days' wonder, and gave rise to extraordinary rumours. A Turkish
+officer in full uniform had been seen running for dear life down the
+Grand Rue de Pera, pursued by policemen. The officer took refuge in the
+Turkish club, but he was refused asylum there. The policemen crowded
+into the entrance hall to arrest him, while the fugitive dashed upstairs
+to the card-room. Finding, however, that he could not avoid arrest, he
+threw himself out of the window, and was instantly killed on the
+pavement below. For some time, the corpse, dressed in the uniform of the
+Yildiz Guards, blocked the traffic of the city.
+
+A few days later a British air-raid gave the Constantinopolitans
+something new to think about. It was a stifling night, and I was dozing
+and listening to the mosquitoes that buzzed round me, when their drone
+seemed to grow louder and louder. I lay quite still, thinking that
+another raid would be too good to be true. But presently there was no
+doubt about it. Invisible, but very audible, the British squadron was
+sailing overhead. I jumped up and at that moment the Turks put up their
+barrage. Bang! Boom! Whizz! Kk--kk--kk! All the little voices of
+civilisation were speaking.
+
+Greeks crowded into the streets, and clapped their hands when the crash
+and rumble of a bomb was heard in the Turkish quarter of Stamboul.
+
+"The Sultan is going to make peace," they told me. "He has refused to
+gird on the Sword of Othman until the Committee of Union and Progress
+give an account of their funds."
+
+"Hurrah for the English!" shouted others, quite undismayed by the
+shrapnel and falling pieces of shell.
+
+Here are some chance remarks, actually heard during air raids.
+
+"Ah! Here is the revolution at last!" said a Turkish officer in a
+chemist's shop in the Grand Rue de Pera, thinking the firing meant the
+downfall of Enver Pasha and his gang.
+
+"Bread costs four shillings a two-pound loaf," said an Armenian in the
+suburb of Chichli--"and as often as not there is a stone or half a mouse
+thrown into the four shillings' worth, for luck. May this gang of
+swindlers perish!"
+
+"Allah! send the English soon," wailed a Turkish widow in a hovel in
+Stamboul, where she was living with her five starving children. "We are
+being killed by inches now; it would be better to be killed quickly by
+bombs. The English cannot be worse than Enver."
+
+This, indeed, was the general opinion in Constantinople. Few of the
+population, outside the high officials, bore us any grudge. The thieving
+of the Young Turks was on as vast a scale as their ambition. From needy
+adventurers they had become the prosperous potentates of an Empire. No
+country, surely, has ever been the prey of such desperate and determined
+men.
+
+The air raids were one of the first causes of their weakening hold on
+the people. The moral effect of these demonstrations was incalculable,
+coming as it did at a time when the Sultan was supposed to be in favour
+of peace.
+
+Peace, indeed, was the only faint hope of salvation that remained to the
+very poor. Milk had almost disappeared from the open market, and for
+some time past children had been exposed in the street, their mothers
+being unable to support them any longer.
+
+Each night, when I passed the Petits Champs, I saw a row of starving
+children, poor little living protests of humanity against the barbarisms
+of war and the cruelty of profiteers, huddled on the pavement, mute,
+uncomplaining, too weak to even ask for alms.
+
+And Bedri Bey, sometime Prefect of Police at Constantinople, when
+appealed to, said: "_Bah! Les pauvres, qu'ils crevent._"
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Although politics were interesting enough, escape was my first
+preoccupation. It was necessary to approach the harbour officials with
+caution, and they, on their side, although ready enough to help with
+suggestions, seemed inclined to shelve all the actual work on to a
+person or persons unknown, who remained in the background. It was very
+difficult to get at the principals.
+
+One of the chief agents of escape, however, I met one day in the Grand
+Rue de Pera. He was a most remarkable man. Intrigue was the breath of
+his nostrils, and although he had made thousands of pounds by helping
+rich refugees out of the country, he was really more interested in
+politics than pelf. He laid the groundwork of such knowledge as I
+acquired of Constantinople.
+
+Incidentally, in the course of our conversation, a squad of Russian
+officer prisoners passed, accompanied by two sentries whom I knew quite
+well. So confident did I feel of not being recognised that I said a few
+words to one of the Russians, while their escort glanced at me with
+faces perfectly blank. They had not the vaguest idea who I was.
+
+To get away from Constantinople, the escape merchant told me, was a
+matter of passing the custom house. Formerly this had been easy, but now
+every ship was searched from stem to stern and from deck to keelson.
+Also every skipper was a Mohammedan. All Christians had been recently
+deprived of their positions.
+
+Still, Mohammedans are not an unbribable people, and something might
+possibly be done for me. In fact, that very day he had learnt of a
+certain Lazz shipmaster, who was going over to the Caucasus in his own
+boat, and who would be prepared to take a few passengers for a
+consideration.
+
+Later in the same day I heard that two other officers, who had escaped
+about a week before (by bolting under a train in Haidar Pasha railway
+station), were already in touch with this Lazz. I went to see them early
+the following morning and we agreed to charter the boat between us, so
+as to reduce expenses.
+
+My two friends were living in the house of one Theodore, a Greek waiter
+at a restaurant in Sirkedji, who believed that they, as well as myself,
+were Germans.
+
+The Lazz, who came to visit us, was absolutely astounded when we
+proclaimed ourselves as British officers: he had been under the
+impression that we were some sort of Turkish subject. However, all
+passengers were grist to his mill, and British officers who talked
+glibly of gold payments were not people to be neglected. After haggling
+about terms, we made an appointment for the next day, and parted with
+some cordiality.
+
+On the morrow, punctual to our appointments, the Lazz and I again
+arrived at Theodore's house to confer further with my two friends.
+
+As it was a very hot afternoon, I took off my coat and my false
+moustache, before plunging into the details of our departure. It was
+evident that the Lazz was in a hurry to be off. His cargo was complete,
+he said. He had only to take in petrol for his motor before leaving on
+the following day. There remained the question of money, and after much
+argument we settled to pay him five hundred pounds on arrival at the
+port of Poti in the Caucasus, and one hundred pounds advance for fuel
+immediately. He was to provide the disguises necessary for us to pass
+the customs at the Bosphorus. We were each of us to don a black dress
+and a black veil and to sit in a row in his cabin, refusing to move or
+speak if interrogated. Muslim ladies, he assured us, had frequently
+refused to undergo any scrutiny whatever at the customs, and provided
+they were vouched for by some responsible person on board, the gallant
+excisemen were ready to let them pass. As his very own wives, said the
+Lazz, no harm could possibly come to us, provided of course we remained
+sitting, and silent, throughout the inspection.
+
+This seemed a very satisfactory scheme, for obviously whatever risks we
+ran, our friend the Lazz would run them too.
+
+By evening our pact was complete. We handed over a hundred pounds, and
+the Lazz promised faithfully that he would have the boat ready and our
+disguises prepared by nightfall on the following day, when we would sail
+for Russia.
+
+Hardly had the money changed hands before I noticed a suspicious-looking
+individual in the street below. Presently he was joined by another
+detective, whom I recognised.
+
+Things looked ugly.
+
+We took the Lazz cautiously to the window.
+
+"Do you know anything about those men?" we asked.
+
+He turned deathly pale, but swore he had never seen them before. I do
+not think he had. His fear was genuine.
+
+"Let me get out! Let me get out!" he said, making a bolt for the door.
+
+And he went. There was no use in trying to stop him.
+
+One of my friends and I now went downstairs, while the third member of
+our party stayed behind to hide a few odds and ends of gear, in case the
+house was searched.
+
+We waited downstairs, making light of our fears, and fighting a
+premonition of disaster.
+
+Presently there was a loud tapping on the door. Even if it were the
+police, I thought, our disguises would carry us through. Then I noticed
+that my friend was in shirt-sleeves. I put on my spectacles and tried to
+stick on my moustache again, but the gum from it had gone.
+
+The rapping at the door became louder and louder, and presently it was
+opened by a flustered female.
+
+In trooped six detectives, including the man I had recognised, who was
+apparently their leader.
+
+"There are some British officers hiding here," he said fiercely to the
+woman; "show me where they are."
+
+While this scene was passing in the entrance-hall, we were behind the
+door of the pantry.
+
+A detective came in and caught my friend. Meanwhile two others were
+pommelling the unfortunate woman to make her say where we were. She kept
+pleading that she knew nothing about any British officers.
+
+Another instant, and I should have been found. So I came out from behind
+the pantry door, and crossed the entrance hall.
+
+In the doorway stood a burly policeman, who said "_Yok, yok_," when I
+attempted to pass him.
+
+Had I had the requisite nerve I believe I could have bluffed this man.
+Some phrase with _schweinhund_ in it would probably have got me past.
+But I hesitated, and was lost.
+
+My hand flew to my breast pocket, where the forged passport lay, and my
+false moustache.
+
+"Seize that man and search him," said the head detective, looking over
+the banisters. Then he went upstairs, dragging the woman with him.
+
+My arms were instantly caught from behind, while a seedy-looking youth,
+who was probably a pick-pocket in his spare time, ran his fingers over
+my clothes. My wad of money, watch, compass, passport, moustache,
+everything was put into a small canvas bag, and I was then taken to the
+opposite corner of the room to that in which my friend sat, and told
+not to move under pain of death. A levelled revolver emphasised the
+injunction.
+
+[Illustration: The Author as a Hungarian Mechanic]
+
+Presently there were cries of women heard from the attic, then there was
+a loud crash, and I knew that the third member of our party had fallen
+through the trapdoor leading to the roof.
+
+That was the last of my freedom for the time. Thus suddenly my five
+weeks' scheming was ended.
+
+Each of us was taken charge of by two policemen, who linked their arms
+in ours. Presently the order to march was given, and a dismal
+procession, consisting of two weeping women, a seedy-smart individual in
+a bowler hat, two youths in slippers and shirt-sleeves, and a Greek
+waiter, could be seen wending their way to the Central Gaol of
+Stamboul.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+Before leaving, we had protested strongly against the treatment of the
+women in the house.
+
+"But they are Turkish subjects," said the detectives.
+
+"Anyway, they are women," we protested.
+
+But this had little effect. Theodore and his unfortunate family were
+marched off behind us to the Central Gaol. I think, however, that our
+protest was not quite in vain, for it gave the women courage. When I
+last saw them, before being taken to the Chief of Police, they had dried
+their tears. Eventually they were released, but not, alas! until they
+had endured much suffering.
+
+The Chief of Police congratulated us on being safe once more in Turkish
+hands.
+
+"Yes, we are comfortably back in prison," I said with a faint smile,
+"and therefore there is surely no harm in giving us back the personal
+trifles that the detectives took from us."
+
+"I cannot give you your papers," he said. "There is a forged passport
+here, amongst other things."
+
+"Very well, do as you like about that," I said, shrugging my shoulders,
+"but surely my empty pocket-book and my watch might be returned."
+
+To this he agreed, whereupon he handed me--
+
+(_a_) My pocket-book, containing five pounds hidden in the lining.
+
+(_b_) My watch, and a compass, which he mistook for another timepiece.
+
+(_c_) My false moustache, which had been captured on my person.
+
+I was in an agony of anxiety about this moustache. Had the police
+inquired at the only two hairdressers' where such things were made, they
+would have found that Miss Whitaker had ordered it for me only ten days
+before. But now it was safely in my possession again. I had the only
+connecting link of evidence that might incriminate Miss Whitaker in my
+trouser pocket, and was tearing it to shreds as I talked to the Chief of
+Police.
+
+The interview passed on a note of felicitation, until the very end.
+After praising the smart way his men had surrounded the house, and
+receiving his congratulations on our escapes, just as if the whole thing
+was a game, we said that there was one criticism we had to make on
+police methods, and that was their treatment of women.
+
+"They are Turkish subjects," snapped the Chief of Police, suddenly
+showing his teeth.
+
+"They are women," we retorted, "and they are innocent. If they are
+maltreated----"
+
+"I know how to manage my affairs," he said with a gasp of annoyance.
+
+"Certainly. But if they are maltreated you will be responsible after the
+war."
+
+To this he made no reply.
+
+We were removed without further ado, and after being photographed and
+measured in the most approved fashion for criminals, we were taken up
+long flights of stairs, and across a roof, to the quarters for prisoners
+awaiting trial. Here we were allotted separate cells, where we were to
+pass the next few days in strict isolation.
+
+To my amazement (for I knew something of Turkish prisons from a previous
+experience, not here recorded) these cells were scrupulously clean. A
+bed, a table, and a chair were in each apartment, all very firm and
+foursquare, as if designed to withstand any access of fury or despair on
+the prisoner's part. There was electric light in the ceiling, covered
+with wire netting. Walls and woodwork were of a neutral colour. The
+windows, which were barred, had a convenient arrangement for regulating
+the ventilation. The heavy door, which admitted no sound, was provided
+with a sliding hatch, which could be opened by the warders at will for
+purposes of investigation. Everything was hideously efficient.
+
+Turkey is a country of surprises, but I was not prepared for this. I
+would have preferred something more picturesque. One's mind, after the
+testing climax of recapture, craves for new doses of excitement.
+
+The brain of a criminal, after he has been apprehended, must be a
+turmoil of thought. He curses his stupidity, or his luck, or his
+associates. He longs to explain and defend himself. Instead of this, he
+is left in silence in a drab room, with no company but his thoughts.
+
+My own thoughts were most unpleasant. I had failed miserably and
+innocent people were suffering as the result.
+
+After five weeks of effort I was farther than ever from escape. Worse
+than all, Miss Whitaker was in danger. Never again shall I pass such
+dismal hours. I see myself now, seated on that solid chair with head on
+arms, bent over that efficient table. A prisoner's heart must soon turn
+to stone.
+
+But although our surroundings were inhuman, one of our gaolers had a
+generous heart. He opened the slot in my door merely to say he was sorry
+about it all, and that the women were all right. It is little actions
+such as these that so often light the darkest hours of life. The man was
+a European Turk.
+
+It was urgently necessary to communicate with my fellow-prisoners, in
+order to arrange to tell the same story. My friend next door solved the
+problem by bawling up through his barred window at the top of his voice
+that he would leave a note for me in the wash-place.
+
+"Right you are!" I howled in answer, and instantly the slot of my door
+opened, and I had to explain that I was singing.
+
+Already, interest was beginning to creep back into one's life. I found
+the note in the wash-place, read it secretly, thought over my answer,
+and transcribed the message on to a cigarette paper. Having no writing
+material, I used the end of a match dipped into an ink prepared from
+tobacco juice and ash. By these simple means we established a regular
+means of communication and before forty-eight hours of our strict
+seclusion had elapsed we were all three in possession of a complete,
+circumstantial, and fictitious account of our adventures prior to
+capture.
+
+When not engaged on reminiscences, I was generally pacing my cell, or
+trying to invent some new form of exercise to keep myself fit. But at
+times energy failed and one felt inclined to gnash one's teeth at the
+futility of it all.
+
+One day, when I was feeling inclined to gnash my teeth, the slot in my
+door was furtively withdrawn, and, instead of a gaoler, a very comely
+vision appeared at the observation hatch. A pair of laughing black eyes
+were looking in on me. She wrinkled her nose, and laughed. I jumped up,
+thinking I was dreaming, and hoping that the dream would continue. At
+the same moment something dropped on to my floor. Then the trap door was
+softly shut to.
+
+I found a tiny stump of lead pencil. That was proof of the reality of my
+vision.
+
+Countless excuses to leave my cell, and voluminous correspondence with
+the pencil's aid eventually enabled me to find out that she was an
+Armenian girl, awaiting trial, who took a deep interest in us. At great
+risk to herself, she had provided the three of us with writing
+instruments. Except for a brief glimpse, and a mumbled word, I was never
+able to thank her, however, owing to circumstances beyond our control.
+
+On the fourth day we were transferred to the Military Prison in the
+Square of the Seraskerat.
+
+As usual in Turkey, our move was sudden and unexpected. That morning, on
+complaining at mid-day that I had as yet received no food, I was told
+that _inshallah_--if God pleased--it would arrive in due course.
+
+Instead of a belated breakfast, however, a _posse_ of policemen arrived,
+and we started on our journeys again: my friends still in their
+shirt-sleeves and slippers, and myself still in my bowler hat, although
+I did not now wear it so rakishly.
+
+But we were fairly cheery. We had learnt (no matter how) that the
+females of Theodore's family would soon be released, and that Theodore
+himself, although still in duress, would not suffer any extreme fate.
+Also, it was by now fairly obvious that Miss Whitaker would not be
+apprehended, as sufficient evidence was not obtainable against her. She
+had covered her tracks too well. All things considered, there was no
+cause for depression.
+
+But waiting is hungry work. That afternoon still saw us, fretful and
+unfed, waiting outside the office of Djevad Bey, the Military
+Commandant of Constantinople.
+
+At last I was taken into an ornate room, where I had my first talk with
+this redoubtable individual, who was popularly supposed to be the
+hangman of the Young Turks. Anyone less like an executioner I have never
+seen. He was plump, well-dressed, with humorous grey eyes. He wore long,
+rather well-fitting boots, and smoked his cigarettes from a long amber
+holder. He also had a long amber moustache, which was being trained
+Kaiser-wise.
+
+I stood before him at attention.
+
+"About this forged passport," he began--"do gentlemen in your country
+forge each other's signatures?"
+
+"It is not usual," I admitted.
+
+"Then you, as an English gentleman, surely did not counterfeit my
+writing?"
+
+"Oh no! I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."
+
+"Then how do you account for this passport being in your possession?"
+
+I remained silent.
+
+"Who forged it?" he insisted.
+
+"May I look?" said I. "Is that really your signature?"
+
+"It is indeed. With it you could easily have got out of the country."
+
+"What an idiot I was not to use it!" I said with quite unfeigned
+annoyance.
+
+"You were!" he laughed--"they would have passed you straight through the
+Customs on seeing this."
+
+I felt very faint at this moment, and staggered against the table. But I
+recovered after an instant. I quite forget his next few remarks, but I
+know that I committed myself to a story that I had bought the passport
+from a man in a restaurant whom I could not now recognise.
+
+"But where have you been living all these weeks?" he asked.
+
+"I was living in the ruins near the Fatih mosque," I said glibly--"and I
+used to lunch and dine at various cafes in the city, a different one
+every day. It was in one of these places that I bought the passport."
+
+Djevad Bey considered this statement for a moment. There was a nasty
+look in his eye when he spoke again.
+
+"I shall never rest until I know who it is who can forge my signature so
+well," he said--"and until I know, I am afraid you will be very
+uncomfortable, for by law you are in the position of a common
+malefactor."
+
+"By law I am in the position of a prisoner of war," I answered--"and as
+such, I am liable to a fortnight's simple imprisonment, for attempting
+to escape. The Turkish Government signed this agreement only a few
+months ago with the British representatives at Berne."
+
+"A man who forges another's name is not an officer, but a forger," he
+said meaningly.
+
+"Say what you like, and do what you like," I answered--"I am in your
+power. But one thing I ask, and that is, that if you punish me, you
+should liberate the innocent Theodore and his family. True, we were
+found in their house, but----"
+
+"I cannot believe what you say," said Djevad Bey thoughtfully.
+
+There was a pause. Then:
+
+"Come, as man to man, won't you tell me who forged that passport?"
+
+"You have just called me a liar," said I. "That ends the matter."
+
+And with an all-is-over-between-us air I left the room, feeling dizzy
+and uncomfortable.
+
+It was then four o'clock in the afternoon, and I had not yet eaten. I
+did not feel at all amused at the prospect of the Military Prison.
+
+I was taken downstairs into the darkness, on entering this inferno of
+the damned of Enver Pasha. There were cries and shouts down there, and
+men scrambling for food, and other men who looked like wild animals,
+behind bars. A swarthy custodian took my name, and I then proceeded,
+down a long corridor, until my escort reached an iron portal such as
+Dante imagined long ago.
+
+_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. . . ._ The gates had clanged
+behind me, and I was in a long, low room below ground level, airless,
+ill-lit, filthy with tomato skins and bits of bread. Well-fed rats were
+scurrying amongst the garbage, and badly-fed prisoners were pacing the
+room forlornly, or twiddling their thumbs, or scratching themselves, or
+gnawing crusts of bread.
+
+They gathered round me, clamouring for news and cigarettes. In less than
+no time they had picked my pockets. They had no more morals than
+monkeys. Poor devils! who could blame them, living as they did down
+there, where no rumours are heard of the outside world, except the cries
+of beaten men and the dull sound of wood on flesh?
+
+"What are you in for?" they asked me.
+
+"Forgery," said I, not to be outdone by any desperado present.
+
+One man, however, confessed to murder, having cut a small boy's throat a
+few months before. With him I could not compete. But the most of us were
+fraudulent contractors, spies, petty swindlers and the like. Our morals,
+as I have said, were practically _nil_. Yet I noticed that a Jew lived
+quite apart, and was shunned by everybody. By trade he was a brigand,
+but this was no slur on his character as a criminal: the failing that
+had led to ostracism was that he pilfered the other prisoners' tomatoes.
+That was really beyond a joke. . . .
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+One of my newly found friends took me to a bed, consisting of two planks
+on an iron frame, which he said I could have for my very, very own. He
+also gave me a piece of bread and some water. On beginning to eat I at
+once realised how hungry I was, and inquired how I should obtain further
+nourishment.
+
+"Luxuries are very difficult to obtain," he said; "how much money have
+you got?"
+
+"Twenty-five piastres,[9]" I answered.
+
+He pulled a long face.
+
+"That won't go far. But every evening at eight a boy comes round with
+the scraps left over from the Officers' Restaurant. Otherwise you will
+live on bread and tomatoes."
+
+"What about bedding?" I asked, to change the subject.
+
+"Bedding!" he said, looking at me as if I was a perfect idiot. "Do you
+mean to say you have come here without any bedding?"
+
+I admitted I had, but felt too exhausted to explain.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+One was utterly lost in that dungeon. Even when the war ended, would one
+be found? I doubted it. Yet as I would naturally never reveal the
+forger's name, it seemed unlikely that I would get out. . . . Then I
+thought of my companions. I imagined them happily together, in some
+place where one could see the sky. . . . As for me, I might languish
+down here for ever. Obviously something should be done.
+
+But what? I rose (rather hastily, for on looking between the planks of
+my bed, I noticed that the crack was entirely filled with battalions of
+board beasts in line, waiting for a night attack), and began to pace
+our narrow and nasty apartment. A group of prisoners were cooking some
+pitiful mess by the window. Four others played poker with a very greasy
+pack. One was twiddling his thumbs very fast, and I suddenly recollected
+that he had been twiddling his thumbs very fast half an hour ago, when I
+had first seen him. The lonely Jew was removing lice from the seams of
+his coat, and throwing his quarry airily about the room.
+
+Then I noticed that besides ourselves, there were other prisoners even
+more unfortunate. There had been so much to see in my new surroundings
+that I had not noticed the people in chains. . . . One side of our room
+opened out on to some half-dozen cubicles, each of which contained a
+prisoner in chains. These cells had no light or ventilation. They
+measured six feet in length by four in breadth. In solitude and
+obscurity, fettered by wrist and ankle to shackles that weighed a
+hundredweight, human beings lived there--and are still living for aught
+I know--for months and even years, until death released them. These men
+were ravenous and verminous, but they had by no means lost their hope
+and faith. I shall never hear the hymn--
+
+  "Thy rule, O Christ, begin,
+   Break with Thine iron rod
+   The tyrannies of sin . . ."
+
+without remembering that an Armenian lad said those words to me, lying
+in chains in one of these cells. With another prisoner, a Greek, who
+had endured eleven months of this torture, I also had some speech.
+
+"Yes, the war will be over soon," he said. "My God, how good this
+cigarette of yours tastes! I haven't touched tobacco for a month. But be
+careful. The sentries must not see you speaking to me."
+
+"Yes, the chains were bad at first," he continued when the sentry's back
+was turned, "but one gets used to anything in time. And I have had time
+enough. It takes a lot to kill a healthy man. Before I came in here I
+used to be strong and well. I used to ride two hours every day, on my
+own horses. Now my horses have gone to feed the Turkish Army and I can
+hardly drag my chains as far as the water-tap. But God is great. . . ."
+
+God is great! _Allahu akbar!_
+
+I determined to get away from that dungeon at all costs, if for no other
+reason than because I had to survive to write about it.
+
+I went to the big gate, and tried to bluff the sentry to let me go to
+see the Commandant. But a clean face and a full stomach are practically
+necessary to a _debonnaire_ appearance. When one is scrubby and starved
+it is almost impossible to succeed in "wangling." I stared at the sentry
+through my eyeglass, and I offered him my twenty-five piastres as if I
+had plenty more _baksheesh_ to give to a good boy, but I utterly and
+dismally failed to impress him.
+
+"_Yok, yok, yok_," he said, looking at me as one might look at an
+orang-outang that has
+
+  +-------------------------------+
+  |  DO NOT IRRITATE THIS ANIMAL  |
+  +-------------------------------+
+
+written over its cage.
+
+I gibbered in impotent rage, and then went and put my head under a tap.
+
+A little later, while I was drying my head with my handkerchief, I saw
+some barbers come to the big gate. They stood there, clapping and
+clacking their strops. Instantly, my fellow-prisoners rushed to the gate
+as if they had heard the beating of the wings of some angel of
+deliverance. This was apparently the occasion of their weekly shave,
+when egress to the corridor was permitted, the barbers naturally not
+wishing to go inside our loathsome room.
+
+Taking this tide in the affairs of men at the flood, I found it led on
+to fortune. I was in the corridor with six other prisoners, and a barber
+confronted me with a razor in his hand. He whetted his steel
+expectantly, but I would have none of him, and seized a passing official
+by the arm.
+
+He was a dog-collar gentleman.
+
+A dog-collar gentleman, I must explain, is Authority Incarnate. On his
+swelling chest he wears a crescent tablet of brass, with the one word
+_Quanun_ inscribed thereon. _Quanun_ means "law," and the wearer of this
+badge is responsible for public decorum of every kind. If a Turkish
+officer be seen drinking alcohol in uniform, or playing cards, or
+flirting, or talking disrespectfully of the Germans, or indulging in any
+other prohibited amusement, he is instantly arrested by the dog-collar
+gentleman, and brought to prison. In his official capacity, the
+dog-collar gentleman is one of the most important personages in Turkey:
+policeman, pussfoot and prude in one.
+
+"There is some mistake," I said excitedly. "I am a British officer, and
+have been put in a room with criminals."
+
+"You a British officer?" said the dog-collar man incredulously.
+
+"A captain of cavalry," said I, slipping him the twenty-five piastre
+note.
+
+"_Pekke, Effendim_," he answered. "Very good, sir, I will see what can
+be done."
+
+I had burnt my boats now.
+
+About ten minutes later, just as I was flatly refusing to either be
+shaved or to return through the gate, a sergeant-major and a squad of
+soldiers arrived and bore me off to the Prison Commandant.
+
+Here I caught sight of my two companions, and was able to fling them a
+few words through the "Yok, yok" of the sentries. They also had been
+separated, and put amongst criminals. Their lot had been no different to
+mine.
+
+"A slight mistake has occurred," said the Prison Commandant to me, "but
+now you shall have one of the best rooms in the prison. Only I am
+afraid you will be alone there, until after your trial."
+
+Of course I did not believe him, but I was glad that I was to be alone.
+
+I was taken to a room on the upper floor, furnished with a bed and
+blanket, and with a window opening on to a corridor, where people were
+always passing. The Commandant had spoken the truth. It was quite a good
+room, as prison apartments go, and the traffic of the corridor amused
+me.
+
+At nine o'clock that night I was able to get a dish of haricot beans, my
+first meal of the day.
+
+Then I settled down to a month of solitary confinement.
+
+I think I may claim to write of this torture, which exists not only in
+Turkey but through the prisons of the civilised world, with some expert
+knowledge. I use the word "torture" because it is nothing less. Solitary
+confinement is a punishment as barbarous and as senseless as the
+thumbscrew or the rack: more so indeed, for it is better to kill the
+body than to maim the mind. The spirit of man is more than his poor
+flesh; the war has reminded us of that. And if it has also reminded us
+that our prison systems are archaic, so much the better for the world.
+
+At times, in gaol, a tide of pity rose in me for all life created that
+is caged by man.
+
+Take a felon at one end of the scale, and a canary at the other. The
+felon is imprisoned for twenty years. For twenty years, less some small
+remission for good conduct, an abnormal brain lives in abnormal
+surroundings, where hope dies, and ideals fail. He has sinned against
+society, and therefore society murders his mind. Corporal and capital
+punishment, I have come to believe, are saner than the cruelties,
+immeasurable by "the world's coarse thumb and finger," suffered by the
+mind of man in solitary confinement or the common gaol. The
+sentimentalist who shudders at the cat and gallows forgets the worse,
+slow, hidden horrors that pass unseen in the felon's brain. Perhaps the
+sentimentalist does not realise them. Perhaps also the old lady who
+keeps a canary does not realise the feelings of her pet. She may think
+she is protecting it from the birds and beasts outside. But I feel now
+that I know what the canary feels. . . . However, it is difficult to
+argue about questions involving imagination.
+
+I lived on hope, chiefly, during the days that followed. With nothing to
+read, no cutting instrument of any sort, no washing arrangements, and no
+one to speak to, the time passed hideously. I used to gaze at my watch
+sometimes, appalled at the slow passage of time. The second-hand had a
+horrible fascination for me. It simply crawled round its dial and each
+instant, between the jerks of the little hand, the precious moments of
+my youth were passing, beyond recall. Madness lay that way. If I had
+been a real criminal, I wondered, would I have repented? Unquestionably
+the answer was, "No!" Solitary confinement would have made me a
+permanent enemy of society.
+
+There were no smiles and soap in that Military Prison, no scissors, no
+sanitation. There was nothing human or clean about it. Nothing but
+destruction will rid it of its vermin, or scour it of its taint of
+disease and death.
+
+Perhaps the lack of scissors was the amenity of life whose absence I
+most deplored. Try to do without a cutting instrument for a month, and
+you will realise why it was that some sort of cutting edge was the first
+need of primitive man and remains a prime necessity to-day.
+
+However, as a matter of fact, I did not remain a whole month without a
+cutting edge. Before a fortnight had elapsed I had bettered my position
+in many ways. I had secured a knife (which I stole from the restaurant),
+a wash-basin (sent from the Embassy), and pencil and paper from a
+friendly clerk. With these writing instruments I used to correspond
+voluminously with the other British prisoners, by various privy methods.
+
+I had a regular routine for my days now. Early mornings were devoted to
+walking briskly up and down my room in various gaits--the sailor's roll,
+for instance, and the Napoleonic stride, and the deportment of various
+of my acquaintances. During this time I avoided thinking, but generally
+imagined some incident in which I took a distinguished part. In the
+forenoon I played games, such as throwing my soap to the ceiling and
+catching it again, or juggling with cigarettes, both lighted and
+unlighted. The afternoon generally passed in sleep, but the evening and
+nights were bad. It was then that the second hand of my watch began to
+exert its fascination. The electric light bulb, however, could
+occasionally be tampered with, and on these occasions there was always
+the hope that the sentries would get a shock in putting it right. Also I
+found amusement in my watch chain, which I made into an absorbing
+puzzle.
+
+But, curiously enough, I found it impossible to write anything, except
+lengthy letters.
+
+A real prisoner in a well-constituted prison does not enjoy his days any
+more than I did. On the other hand, he knows how long his sentence is
+going to last, whereas in my case I was confined during Djevad Bey's
+pleasure, or the duration of the war, and each day brought me nearer
+nothing--except insanity.
+
+One evening, however, an Imperial Son-in-law entered my room, and lit my
+life with a certain interest. His father, who was a Court official, had
+betrothed him to a princess, and he had consequently assumed the title
+of Damad, or Son-in-law. This youth had had a remarkable career. While
+still a guileless lad, scarcely broke from the harem, he had used his
+revolver so injudiciously that he had seriously damaged one of the
+Imperial apartments, besides killing the elderly Colonel at whom he was
+aiming. Enver Pasha had of course himself a weakness for this sort of
+thing, but still, to save appearances, the Damad had to be punished. He
+was therefore condemned to three months' confinement in the Military
+Prison. Although nominally in residence there, he used, however, to
+leave prison every Friday to attend the Sultan's Selamlik, and only
+return on Monday night. Moreover, he not only thoroughly amused himself
+during his protracted week-ends, he also squeezed every bit of pleasure
+possible out of his prison days. Life was a lemon, which he sucked with
+grace. He was free to wander where he wished in the prison, and to eat
+and drink what he liked. The best of everything was good enough for the
+Damad. Grapes came for him from the Sultan's garden, and a faithful
+negro slave was always at his heels.
+
+The Damad had rather charming manners. He knocked politely before
+entering my cell.
+
+"Excuse my interrupting," he said, "but----"
+
+"You are not interrupting me at all," I answered, getting up from my
+bed. "I do wish you would stop and talk. Have a cigarette? I haven't
+talked to anyone for a fortnight."
+
+"I am so sorry, but I daren't talk to you. That is a pleasure to come. I
+wanted to borrow something, that's all. And, I say, will you allow me to
+offer you one of my cigarettes--they're the Sultan's brand, you know.
+Better take the box. Well, I saw you with an eyeglass through the window
+in the passage. Will you lend it me to appear at the next Selamlik?"
+
+I was delighted, and said so. To my sorrow, the Damad instantly took his
+departure.
+
+"Smuggle me in something to read," I said, as he left with profuse
+apologies for his hurry.
+
+He nodded, and his long left eyelash flickered.
+
+Next day his little nigger boy, when the sentry's back was turned,
+popped about twenty leaflets into my window. I seized them avidly, and
+found that they were the astounding adventures of Nat Pinkerton in
+French. Never have my eyes rested so gleefully on a printed page. I
+consumed them cautiously, else I should have gorged myself with
+excitement at a single sitting. Like an epicure, I made them last, by
+always breaking off at the critical juncture of the great detective's
+affairs. From that moment my life flowed in more agreeable channels.
+
+"Devouring time, blunt though the lion's paws." . . . I suddenly
+understood Shakespeare's meaning afresh. Time had dulled the clawing of
+regret.
+
+I had failed to escape, it is true, but there was always hope. Things
+were getting better. The women had been released. Themistocle only
+awaited a formal trial. My own condition had improved. I had been moved
+from my solitary confinement, just when I had secured a Bible, and a
+large tin of Keating's, wherewith to combat the devils of captivity. But
+any change is better than none at all, I thought. The mortal hunger for
+companionship is strong, and my new room, besides containing an officer,
+also enjoyed an excellent and varied view.
+
+After a few days' experience of my new room-mate, however, who was a
+Bulgarian Bolshevik, I began to pine for solitude again. A more
+unmitigated Tishbite I have never seen, but fortunately he was smaller
+than I. When I found him washing his feet in my basin one night, I smote
+him, hip and thigh.
+
+That Bulgarian has coloured my whole view of the Balkans. The less said
+about him, the better.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+One day about thirty British officers arrived from the camp at Yuzgad,
+whence they had escaped and been recaptured on the occasion when
+Commander Cochrane and his gallant band of seven marched four hundred
+and fifty miles to freedom. All the party who arrived in the Military
+Prison were in uniform, and in excellent spirits. They were like a
+breath of fresh air in that sordid place. On being put into three rooms,
+these thirty brave men and true at once demanded beds to sleep on. In
+due time the beds arrived, in the usual condition of beds in that place.
+They might have been so many Stilton cheeses. Our thirty prisoners,
+despite the protest of the guards, carried out their couches into the
+passage, and lit two Primus stoves. Over these stoves they proceeded to
+pass the component parts of each bed, so that its occupants were utterly
+exterminated.
+
+Imagine the scene. A dismal corridor, a flaming stove, Turkish sentries
+protesting with Hercules in khaki, cleansing the Augean stable. . . .
+But protests were useless. The smell of burnt bugs mingled with the
+other contaminations of the prison. Our officers had done in little what
+civilisation will one day do at large throughout that land.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+A British officer, going to the feeding place, looked into a window
+which gave on to my room. But I was kept strictly apart from my fellows,
+and the sentry consequently tried to drag the officer away.
+
+"Leave me alone, you son of Belial!" said he. "Isn't a window meant to
+look through?"
+
+Windows in that prison were certainly not meant to look through.
+
+From my new eyrie I had a composite view of startling contrasts. Down
+below, some soldiers were living in a verandah, behind wooden bars.
+Anything more animal than their life it would be impossible to conceive.
+Every afternoon at three o'clock a parade of handcuffed men were
+marshalled two by two, and then pushed into these dens. Beyond them lay
+the city of Stamboul with its clustered cupolas and nine-trellised
+alley-ways. And beyond the city were the blue waters of the Marmora.
+
+Then there was the window in the passage through which the British
+officer had observed me. This gave me a view of the rank and fashion of
+the prison, so that I knew who was being tried, who received visitors,
+and so on.
+
+And directly opposite me, in another face of the building, was yet
+another window, with curtains drawn. That was the window of the Hall of
+Justice. Directly under my perch, but rather too far to jump, were some
+telegraph lines which might possibly have provided a means of escape.
+Sentries used to watch me carefully, whenever I looked at these
+telegraph lines. I was considered a dangerous, indeed a desperate
+character, and my every movement was regarded with apprehension. Not
+only was no one (except now the Bulgarian) allowed to speak to me, but I
+was not even permitted to look at anything, or anyone, for long, without
+being bidden to desist. Whatever I did, in fact, I was told not to do.
+
+Eventually I made a scene.
+
+The immediate cause of the row was that I had a glimpse of a sitting in
+the Hall of Justice. I had often wondered what passed there, for at
+times faint screams used to hint of the infamies that passed behind
+those curtains.
+
+One day I saw.
+
+The Hall of Justice is a fine room, with a lordly sweep of view over the
+city and the sea. Why anyone chose such a situation as a torture chamber
+I do not know. But there it was. There was something dramatic about the
+beautiful prospect and the bestial people who sat with their backs
+turned to it, interrogating the Armenians.
+
+  "Every prospect pleases and only man is vile."
+
+Very vile were the two Turkish officers, judges I suppose, who sat
+smoking cigarettes, while an old Armenian woman and her son stood before
+them to be tried. What passed I could not hear, but evidently her
+answers were not satisfactory, for presently the policeman who stood
+behind her kicked her violently, so that her head jerked back and her
+arms flung forward, and she was sent tottering towards the judges'
+table. Then the policeman took a stick as thick as a man's wrist, and
+began to beat her over the head and shoulders. Her son meanwhile had
+fallen on his knees and was crawling about the room, dragging his
+chains, and supplicating first the judges and then the policeman. He was
+imploring them, no doubt, to have pity on his mother's age and weakness.
+
+She fell down in a faint. The policeman kicked her in the face, and then
+prodded her with a stick until she rose.
+
+I wish the people who are ready to "let the Turk manage his own country"
+could have seen that savage pantomime.
+
+I tried to get out to stop it, but was driven back with bayonets.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Djevad Bey, the Military Commandant of Constantinople, with a
+resplendent retinue, arrived one day to inspect us. With his long
+cigarette-holder, and long shiny boots, he swaggered round, followed by
+_ormulu_ staff officers and diligent clerks and pompous gentlemen in
+dog-collars. Everywhere around him was dirt, disease, destitution, and
+despair. But Djevad Bey in his shiny boots "cared for none of these
+things." He was himself, with his medals and moustaches, and that was
+enough.
+
+"What more do you want, _effendi_?" he asked me after I had made a few
+casual complaints (for it was useless to take him seriously). "You have
+one of the most beautiful views in Europe from the garden."
+
+"But I am not allowed into the garden."
+
+"Have a little patience, _mon cher_," said he. "It is rather crowded
+with older prisoners now. But in a little time perhaps, when I have
+discovered the name of that forger . . ."
+
+And with a condescending smile he passed on between ranks of sentries
+standing stiffly at attention, to inspect another portion of his
+miserable menagerie.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Ah, Djevad, _mon cher_, those days seem distant now! You and your
+popinjays have passed. . . .
+
+[Footnote 9: Five shillings.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  OUR SECOND ESCAPE
+
+
+The ghosts of the prisoners of the Tower, or of the Bastille, could they
+revisit earth, would undoubtedly have found themselves more at home in
+the Military Prison, Constantinople, than anywhere else in the world.
+The dark ages were still a matter of actuality in the dark dungeons of
+Constantinople in 1918. To be tried, for instance, was there considered
+something very up-to-date. Most prisoners were not tried, until their
+sentence was nearly over, when they were formally liberated.
+
+After a month of solitary confinement, and a week of confinement with
+the Bulgarian, which was an even worse travail of the spirit, I received
+the joyful news that the preliminaries for my court-martial were almost
+complete.
+
+I attended this first sitting with the thrill of a debutante going to a
+ball. I determined to make up arrears of talk. And I did. I began at the
+beginning of my life, sketched my education, and came by easy stages to
+my career as an officer in the Indian Cavalry. The clerk who recorded my
+evidence wrote for two hours without pause or intermission, but it is
+worthy of record that at the end of that time we had only reached the
+point where an officer of the Psamattia fire brigade, hearing, as I
+thought, a suspicious movement on the roof of the house across the
+street, kept a stern and steadfast gaze in our direction, while we
+crouched trembling under cover of the parapet. At this point the
+proceedings were adjourned.
+
+But the Court had let fall a useful piece of information. Robin was back
+in prison, but was being kept even more secret and secluded than I.
+
+However, love laughs at locksmiths, and it takes more than a Turkish
+sentry to defeat a persevering prisoner. We sighted each other in
+passages, we met in wash-places, we flipped notes to each other in bits
+of bread, or sent them by a third party concealed in cigarettes. By such
+means, I learnt Robin's remarkable story. . . . After being caught at
+Malgara, ten days after his first escape, he was taken back to the
+Central Gaol, where he was treated as a Turkish deserter and given
+nothing but black bread to eat. He thereupon went on hunger strike for
+three days, and alarmed the Turks by nearly dying in their hands. Later
+he was allowed to purchase a liberal diet, including even wine and
+cigars, which he declared were necessary to his health, but his
+constitution being enfeebled by privation, he developed alarming
+swellings over his face and scalp, which were probably due to some
+noxious ingredient of the hair-dye he had used. In this condition he
+was sent to hospital, and from hospital he escaped again. A Greek
+patient was his accomplice.
+
+Giving this man ten pounds to buy a disguise with, he made an
+appointment with him for nine o'clock outside the German Embassy (!) and
+then set out on his adventures dressed in a white night-shirt. How he
+eluded the sentries is a mystery to me, although I inspected the place
+after the armistice. Patients were then saying (Turks, who are sometimes
+sportsmen, among them): "Here is where a British officer escaped. Thus
+and thus did he climb--past the sentries--along that buttress--down into
+the street hard by the guard-house!". . . . He arrived punctually at
+nine o'clock at the German Embassy, in his night-shirt. But the Greek
+accomplice was not there. He was at that moment drinking and dicing with
+Robin's money. For half an hour Robin waited for him by a tree in the
+shadows of a side street leading to the sea. The few people who passed
+him stared hard, and then moved nervously across to the other pavement.
+They thought he was a madman.
+
+Robin, I think, felt he was a madman too. In his present situation and
+dress, detection was only a matter of time. However, chance might be
+kind and send him a disguise. Cold and disconsolate, he ascended the
+main road that led to the top of the Grand Rue de Pera, and taking his
+way through the traffic, dipped down into the ruins beyond. The saint
+who protects prisoners must have guided that tall white figure, that
+paddled across the busy town. . . . And more, once he was hiding in the
+ruins, the saint must have sent along the small boy who passed close to
+him in that lonely spot of cypresses and desolation. All-unknowing of
+the fate that awaited him behind the angle of the wall, the small boy
+strode sturdily along, thinking perhaps of the nice bran-bread and
+synthetic coffee that awaited him for supper. Robin pounced out of the
+shadow, and seized him by the scruff of the neck. . . . The victim
+instantly began to blubber.
+
+"Give me all your clothes," said Robin.
+
+"Who are you?" sobbed the little boy.
+
+"Brigand," said Robin shortly.
+
+This answer had the desired effect. The youth dried his tears, and
+divested himself of his apparel, which Robin immediately put on. The
+boots were much too small to wear and were returned. Still, the brigand
+was so satisfied with his clothes that he gave the small boy four pounds
+with a magnanimous gesture. Then he set out to seek his fortune, wearing
+a tiny fezz, and a coat whose sleeves reached half-way down his forearm.
+For four days he dodged about the city, never more than a few hours at
+one place, until, just when his strength and his funds were exhausted,
+he found a house to give him shelter. From here he made a plan to
+escape, but was recaught through treachery at the docks, and taken back
+to the Military Prison. Only an Ali Baba could do justice to these
+experiences. Alas! the best books of adventure are just those which are
+never written.
+
+Anyway we were together again, two desperadoes in dungeon, "apart but
+not afar."
+
+The Damad's little nigger boy often contributed to our schemes for
+communication. This lad, who was in training for the position of keeper
+of the harem, and consequently belonged to the species that rises to
+eminence in Turkey, was a remarkable child. He did exactly what he liked
+and no one dared interfere with the little Lord Chamberlain _in posse_.
+He had an uncanny brain and uncanny strength, and I can quite understand
+the reliance which Turkish Pashas are wont to repose in these servants.
+I relied on him myself at times, and was never disappointed.
+
+The arrival of a neutral Red Cross delegate, at about this time, did
+much to secure us better treatment. For over five weeks now I had not
+breathed fresh air, but directly the Red Cross delegate arrived I was
+allowed to go to the bath, escorted by two dog-collar gentlemen with
+revolvers and two sentries with side arms. While glad to feel I was
+employing so many of the Turkish Army while at my ablutions, I could not
+but deplore their anxiety on my behalf.
+
+"No officer has ever succeeded in escaping from this wonderful gaol of
+yours," I said to the Prison Commandant, who (in contrast to Djevad) was
+quite a good fellow in his way "and I don't suppose anyone ever will.
+Why therefore go to the trouble of guarding us so closely? It would be
+a very graceful act on your part if you allowed us to go occasionally
+into the garden."
+
+"Yarin, inshallah," murmured the Commandant, meaning, "To-morrow, please
+God."
+
+And to-morrow, strange to say, actually arrived in about a week's time.
+
+Perhaps a bomb raid hastened matters, by stimulating the Commandant's
+desire to do graceful acts before the war was over.
+
+One of the bombs of this raid dropped in the school playground just
+outside the Seraskerat Square, and shattered all the windows in my
+passage. Fortunately all the children were away, it being Friday. No one
+was killed by that bomb, but a large handsome Turkish officer prisoner
+standing beside me in the passage, when some panes of glass beside us
+burst, threw himself on the floor and refused to rise again, declaring
+he was killed. A full ten minutes he lay, with his moustaches in the
+dust, surrounded by sentries. In the confusion that ensued Robin
+cleverly slipped over to me and we had a very useful chat.
+
+The first and most vital thing to do, we decided, was to get into
+Constantinople, in order to learn how the situation really stood, and
+make our plans for escaping, so that in the event of our success we
+should be in possession of knowledge useful to the Allies.
+
+Having settled this, we returned to our respective cells, where I
+witnessed a scene that, by contrast with the behaviour of the nervous
+Turkish officer, reminded me of the "patient deep disdain" that the
+East will always feel for the marvels of our age of steel. Our machines
+are things of a day, but the ancient needs remain. The bomb that had
+dropped in the playground had wrecked a large tree that stood in its
+centre, and hardly had its smoke cleared away before an elderly peasant
+appeared with a donkey and started collecting twigs and splinters for
+firewood. Slowly and stolidly, under that barrage-riven sky, the old man
+continued gathering the aftermath of the raid, before the raid was
+finished. Empires might crumble to the dust: he would cook his dinner
+with the pieces.
+
+This bombing business "cleared the air" for us greatly, and another
+little incident clinched matters.
+
+An officious sentry, who had received the usual orders about treating
+Robin with especial severity, so far exceeded his instructions as to
+slap Robin in the face when he was merely standing at the door of his
+room. Robin instantly knocked him down with a hook on the point of the
+jaw that would have sent a prizefighter to sleep, let alone a _posta_.
+There was a click of rifles and a glitter of bayonets. Sergeants were
+whistled for. Swords and spurs rang down the corridor. The Commandant
+arrived.
+
+What seemed an awkward situation for Robin at first now turned greatly
+to his advantage. He demanded an apology from the Minister of War, and
+although he did not receive this, our treatment immediately improved.
+The Turkish sentry was so clearly in the wrong that the Commandant felt
+he should do something to placate us.
+
+One day, Robin and I were told that we would be allowed into
+Constantinople to shop, provided we gave our parole not to escape while
+in the town.
+
+This we immediately decided to do, and wrote a promise stating that
+while we could give no permanent engagement about our behaviour while
+guarded in prison, if we were allowed out into the town we bound
+ourselves to return faithfully to our quarters at a fixed time. Next
+day, accordingly, we dressed in the quaint apologies for clothes in our
+possession, and sallied out, blinking in the sunlight of the square.
+
+Imagine our surprise when we found an escort of ten armed men, who were
+to accompany us to see that we kept our word. Highly incensed, we
+returned directly to the Commandant's office, followed by our retinue.
+At first the Commandant did not understand the nature of the insult he
+had offered to us, but eventually he agreed that a squad of soldiers was
+unnecessary to enforce an Englishman's promise, and he promised to send
+us out again on the following day, more suitably attended.
+
+This time there were only two dog-collar gentlemen to accompany us, and
+although we were later joined by a third, who, I think, smelt beer and
+beef in the offing, we considered that this number of attendants was not
+unsuitable to our importance. (For a long time after escape, indeed, I
+was always expecting to find a sentry at my elbow. They were very
+convenient for carrying parcels, and during this excursion the minions
+of the law actually carried back to prison our escaping gear, wrapped in
+harmless-looking packages.) Rope, fezzes, and maps were the articles
+chiefly required, and these we purchased without much difficulty in
+restaurants where we were known. Robin and I were adepts at this sort of
+thing by now. One of us had only to go over to our escort's table, and
+standing over them, inquire whether they preferred black beer or yellow:
+meanwhile the other would be "wangling" the waiter. Besides material
+accessories we also required certain moral support. Was it worth while
+to escape? Would the Bulgarians attack Constantinople? What was the
+_morale_ of the Tchatchaldja garrison? . . . . All this and much more we
+learnt from Miss Whitaker, whom we met (just by chance, do you think?)
+at tea at the Petits Champs.
+
+We returned from our excursion highly satisfied with our prospects. That
+evening we thanked the Commandant warmly for our delightful day, and
+asked one favour more, namely that we should be allowed out regularly
+into the garden, in order to get the exercise necessary to our health.
+An hour's walk every day would greatly relieve the tension of captivity.
+Surely, we said, the Commandant did not intend to keep us caged like
+wild beasts, with a minimum of air and exercise?
+
+Permission was granted, with the proviso that we should not talk to
+other prisoners. Of all black sheep we were the blackest ones.
+
+So we walked in the garden, and discussed plans of escape. We now had
+fezzes, rope, and plenty of money. On the other hand, there were so many
+sentries everywhere, and so many doors and barriers to get through, that
+the thing seemed impossible at first.
+
+Bribery was not to be thought of. Any attempt in this direction would
+have sent us through the portals of the damned again, to await the end
+of the war in chains.
+
+Only in the garden was there the slightest chance of success. Our
+chance, however, lay, as before, in the element of the unexpected.
+
+On the far side of the garden from the prison were some iron railings,
+which overlooked a drop of from one hundred to two hundred feet, to a
+street below. These railings were spaced at just about the width of a
+man's head. We tested them at various points while apparently engaged in
+looking at the view, and made a note of the gaps most suitable to
+squeeze through. No one appeared to think it likely we would try to
+escape over a precipice. The six sentries in the garden therefore, whose
+sole duty it was to watch us, generally devoted their attention to
+seeing we did not talk to the Greek clerks who came into the restaurant
+to get their dinner of an evening. Beyond occasionally saying the magic
+word "_Yok_," they allowed us to do much what we liked at the other side
+of the garden, where our interests, they thought, could only be of an
+innocent nature.
+
+At first our idea was to get through the railings and slide down a rope
+into the street, but there were practical difficulties about this.
+Thirty fathoms of rope are impossible to conceal on one's person.
+Besides, we thought of a better plan.
+
+Having got through the railings, we would climb along outside them, past
+the garden, and along the wall of a printing-house, where their support
+still continued, until we reached the main square of the Seraskerat.
+Here we would squeeze back through the railings (for the drop was still
+too difficult to negotiate) and proceed as follows: We would stroll to
+the centre of the square, light cigars, and then suddenly altering our
+demeanour, hurry back to the staff garage where the military motor-cars
+were kept. The sentry on guard would certainly think we were chauffeurs.
+
+With a guttural curse or two, we would start up a car, and drive
+directly to the Bulgarian frontier, or Dedeagatch, as the situation
+dictated. If anyone attempted to stop us on the way, we had only to say,
+"_Kreuzhimmel donnerwetter_," and open out the throttle. The plan was
+charming in its simplicity and _kolossal_ in conception. We already
+imagined ourselves arriving with full details of the Constantinople
+defences, in a big Mercedes car. The plan was complete. We had only to
+do it!
+
+Opportunity came one twilight evening, when we two were alone in the
+garden, with the six sentries, all rather sleepy, and the Damad, who had
+just returned from a hectic week-end up the Bosphorus. He was full of
+stories and news which we did not want to hear. For a time he bored us
+to tears talking of the war, but at last conversation flagged, and we
+bade him a cordial good-night, making an appointment to see him again
+next day, which we trusted we would not be in a position to keep.
+
+Then we edged to the far side of the garden, where the railings were.
+The six sleepy sentries were watching the stream of people going into
+the restaurant near the entrance gate. They paid no attention to us, and
+looked--rather sadly, I thought--at the Greeks who were coming in to
+have a square meal, a thing that they themselves could only dream of.
+
+Feeling that the moment was too good to be lost, and yet somehow too
+good to be true, we stood by the railings, with our heads half through.
+
+"Come on," said Robin cheerily.
+
+I put my head through, and my flinching flesh followed a moment later. I
+hung over the drop and looked and listened tensely for any stir in the
+garden, expecting every moment to hear the clamour of sentries and the
+drone of bullets. But all was quiet. One sentry lit another's cigarette.
+A third was playing with a kitten. The others had their backs turned.
+
+We clambered along, and reached the printing-house. We were out of
+sight of the sentries now, and the way seemed clear, across a patch of
+ivy, to a gap which would give us entrance to the main square. Once we
+had gained its comparative freedom, success, I felt, was certain.
+
+But my hope was short-lived. The railings on the wall of the
+printing-house led past an open window, which we had not been able to
+see from the garden. At this window three Turks were sitting. They were
+officials of the printing-house no doubt, and were now engaged in
+discussing short drinks and the prospect of the Bosphorus. Had we
+interposed our bodies between them and the view, we would have been in a
+very unpleasant position. With one finger they could have pushed us down
+to the street a hundred feet below, or else detained us where we were,
+to wait like wingless flies until soldiers came to drag us back.
+
+It was a horrid anti-climax, but we decided to go back. There was no
+alternative.
+
+That return journey was quite hideous, for at any moment before we
+reached our gap a sentry might have seen us. And even if they had missed
+us at fifty yards (and we were a sitting shot against the sunset) we
+would have looked absolutely foolish and been abjectly helpless.
+
+All went well, however. We squeezed back through the railings, and found
+ourselves in the prison garden again. Our attempt had failed. I felt as
+if someone had suddenly flattened me out with a rolling pin. But Robin
+was quite undismayed.
+
+"Our luck is in," he said--"else we would have been spotted against
+those railings just now. Look, it is a full moon, like the last time we
+escaped. I bet we succeed to-night."
+
+"I won't take your money," I said, hugely heartened, however.
+
+Four of our sentries were smoking sadly, and looking into the
+restaurant, as boys look into a cake-shop. The fifth was standing by the
+gold-fish pond. The sixth leaned against the railings, about eighty
+yards away from us, looking out towards Galata Bridge.
+
+After hurriedly dusting ourselves, we walked straight past him. He
+turned and glanced at his watch, and then at us.
+
+"Just five minutes more," we urged--"we haven't had nearly enough
+exercise yet."
+
+And we continued walking round the garden, breathlessly discussing
+plans.
+
+The sentry nodded and sighed, then turned again to contemplate the
+Golden Horn.
+
+Our one remaining chance was to walk straight out of the gate near the
+restaurant, into the main square. In moments of intense stress one can
+sometimes grasp the psychology of a situation in a flash. We saw into
+the minds of the sentries, I believe. They were bored and unsuspecting.
+A sort of prevision came to us that we would be mistaken for Greek
+employees of the Ministry, and could stroll unquestioned through the
+gate, if we acted instantly.
+
+It was getting dark now. We slipped into a patch of shadow, threw away
+our hats, and taking out the fezzes which we always carried concealed
+under our waistcoats, we put them on our heads. Then we strolled on.
+
+To understand our feelings, it must be remembered that no officer has
+ever before succeeded in escaping from this ancient prison. The Turks
+prided themselves on the fact. Recently, a political suspect had made a
+desperate dash for liberty by the same entrance as we now approached,
+but he had been caught before he reached the outer square. Good men had
+tried--but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And we _knew_, by
+sheer faith, that we would not be stopped.
+
+We walked very slowly now, stopping sometimes to gesticulate, after the
+manner of the Mediterranean peoples. What we said I have no idea, but I
+think I spoke _staccato_ Italian, while Robin answered in Arabic
+imprecations. Near the gate I remember saying to him passionately in
+English: "For God's sake turn your trousers down," for to one's
+sensitive mind such an oddity of dress was certain to spell detection.
+This was idiotic, but my nerves were on edge.
+
+Mingling with the Greeks who were coming out of the restaurant, we came
+at a very, very leisurely pace to the sentry-guarded gate. Everyone has
+a pass of course, both to enter and to leave this gate, but season
+ticket holders, so to speak, are rarely asked to produce their
+credentials.
+
+[Illustration: THE SQUARE OF THE SERASKERAT, CONSTANTINOPLE]
+
+We came level with the sentries at the gate. One of them took a step
+forward, as if to ask Robin a question. Then he looked at us again, and
+changed his mind. I have a sort of idea that my white waistcoat and
+ornamental watch chain saved the situation. No one with such belongings
+could fail to be a personage of clerkly habit.
+
+In that instant, however, faith had almost faltered, and the temptation
+to quicken one's pace had been almost irresistible. To bolt into the
+comparative freedom of the main square was now quite feasible, but we
+had to remember that once there, our difficulties were only half over.
+Every gate was guarded: the same high railings as we had already
+negotiated formed its perimeter, and there was a battalion of soldiers
+in the square itself. Therefore until we were out of the Seraskerat, we
+had to proceed with caution.
+
+Lethargically and nonchalantly we drew away from the restaurant.
+Although time was now a factor of importance (for at any moment the
+sentries in the garden might miss us), we dared not hurry our steps.
+
+"There are no cars about. Are we going into the garage?" I murmured
+doubtfully to Robin.
+
+At that moment an individual came up behind us, who settled the question
+out of hand. He was a Turkish officer. After passing us, he turned round
+to stare. We returned his scrutiny with careful composure, but it was
+quite obvious that he did not like the look of us. Yet our appearance
+was none of his business: he hesitated a moment and then decided to do
+exactly what one might do oneself if one saw a suspicious-looking
+individual in a public place: he went and told a policeman. We saw him
+hurrying to the main gate, where he called out the sergeant of the
+guard. We, meanwhile, were slinking diagonally across the square, as if
+bound for the side gate. To go to the garage now, as if approaching it
+from the Ministry of War, was impossible, as we were being watched. We
+whispered together, making new plans.
+
+It was almost past twilight, but the electric light over the main gate
+showed us the Turkish officer in confabulation with the sergeant of the
+guard. No doubt he was saying that our passports should be scrutinised
+before we were allowed to pass. The sergeant saluted as the officer
+left, and then stood in the circle of light, a burly and menacing
+figure, peering into the gathering darkness.
+
+We had now reached the middle of the Seraskerat and saw that the side
+gate was shut, and sentry-guarded. There was also a sentry in the
+adjacent shed. The main gate was impossible of access. So also was the
+garage. Our only chance lay in going forward.
+
+We went on, past the shed, until we reached some small trees by the side
+of the outer railings. We tried to put our heads through, but owing to a
+slight difference of spacing, we found this could not be done. We would
+have to climb over them.
+
+A couple of people were crossing the square. The sergeant stood blinking
+at the entrance. Else all was quiet.
+
+The railings were only some twelve foot high, so they did not form a
+serious obstacle, but on their other side there was a drop of ten feet,
+into a crowded street. That someone would raise an alarm seemed very
+probable.
+
+From the top of the railings I looked back to the prison where I had
+passed the last two months, and then forward to the street.
+
+Two little girls stood hand in hand, gaping up at me. A street hawker
+glanced in my direction. Except for these, no passer-by appeared to
+notice us.
+
+I dropped in a heap on the pavement. Next moment Robin landed beside me.
+
+We were free once more, this time not to be recaught.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The two little girls clapped their hands with glee when they saw us
+drop. As to the street hawker, I daresay he thought we were robbers, and
+as such, people not to be interfered with. The other passers-by merely
+edged away from us. No one, in Constantinople, will involve himself in
+any civil commotion if he can avoid it. Whether the disturbance be a
+fire or theft, the procedure is the same. If your neighbour is being
+robbed, you look the other way. If your house is being burnt, you bribe
+the fire brigade not to come near it, for it they do, they will
+assuredly loot everything that the flames do not consume. Hence the
+sight of two wild men dropping into a crowded street stirred no civic
+conscience. No one asked who we were.
+
+We crossed the tramway lines unmolested, and dived into a narrow street
+leading down the hill. Then we ran and ran and ran.
+
+That our escape would be instantly reported we did not doubt. That
+Galata Bridge would be watched and all our old haunts also seemed
+certain. The care with which we had been guarded showed that the Turks
+set a value on keeping us out of harm's way. At large in the city we
+would be factors of unrest.
+
+Avoiding main streets, we toiled on and on, through dark by-ways where
+the moonlight did not come, until we reached the old bridge across the
+Golden Horn. Here we decided to separate for the time, so that if one of
+us was caught by the toll-keepers, the other could still make good his
+escape.
+
+But the toll-keepers took their tribute of a stamp without demur. They
+knew nothing of British prisoners.
+
+Crossing, we turned right-handed, passing behind the American
+Ambassador's yacht _Scorpion_, at her berth near the Turkish Admiralty,
+and then went up into the European quarter. In Pera we knew a score of
+houses, between us, that would be glad to give us lodging, and it only
+remained to choose the most convenient.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+It is late at night, some days before the Armistice. I am in the gardens
+of the British Embassy, with a certain Colonel, an escaped prisoner of
+war like myself, who is in close touch with the political situation. We
+had come here, in disguise, to be out of the turmoil of the town.
+
+Outside, in the unquiet streets, men talk of revolution. Gangs of
+soldiers are under arms for twenty-four hours at a stretch. Machine guns
+are posted everywhere. The docks are an armed camp. Detectives and
+informers, the prison and the press-gang are at their old work. All is
+still dark in Constantinople; but we, fugitives at present, and meeting
+by stealth, speak of the day so soon to come when the barren flagstaff
+on the roof of the Embassy will carry the Union Jack.
+
+Below us, as we walk on the terrace, lies the Golden Horn, silver in the
+starlight, and across its waters the city of Stamboul stands dim,
+forlorn, and lovely. The slip of moon that rides over San Sofia seems
+symbol of the waning of misery and intolerance. Soon that sickle will
+disappear, and when the moon of the Moslems rises again and looks
+through the garden where we talk, she will see all round it a happier
+city. . . . Let us hope so, anyway.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Of the maze of plot and counterplot in the city, of the death-throes of
+the old regime, and of our own small part in the history of that time,
+this record of moods and misadventures is not the place to write. My
+life as a prisoner was finished: my brief career as a minor diplomat,
+keeping his finger on the feverish pulse of Turkish politics, had only
+just begun, and the story of those crowded weeks would fill a volume.
+
+Up to the last moment, the Government, in the person of Taalat Pasha,
+hoped to hold the real, if not the ostensible, reins of power. Until the
+flight of the Union and Progress triumvirate, the average Turk affected
+a certain lightheartedness about his country's losses. True, huge
+territories were lost to the Ottoman revenue, but on the other hand they
+had gained the Caucasus. So long as there was taxable territory, what
+did it matter whence the tribute came?
+
+One night, when my newspaper work permitted, I visited a friend of
+Taalat Pasha, without disclosing my identity.
+
+"Nobody but Taalat can possibly manage Turkey," he told me--"and the
+English, if they come, will be well advised to deal with him."
+
+"It is not the English only," I suggested modestly, "but the whole
+world-set-free, that is coming to Constantinople."
+
+"Then the world must deal with Taalat. His party has all the money, and
+all the brains and energy as well."
+
+"Everything except imagination," I replied.
+
+But I did not myself imagine that only thirty-six hours later Taalat,
+the fat telegraphist whom Fate caught in her toils, and Enver, with his
+peacock-grace and peacock-wits, and Djemal, with cruelty stamped on him
+like the brand of Cain, would pass disguised, and in darkness, and in
+fear of death, through the city they had ruled as kings.
+
+Neither did I imagine that in another fortnight the streets of Pera
+would be decked with banners, and the capital of the Turks a playground
+for the peoples against whom they had lately been at war. Nor did I know
+that I should soon be listening to the strains of "Rule Britannia," at
+the Pera Palace Hotel, while an enthusiastic crowd showered confetti on
+the bald head of the Colonel who had just arrived as the first British
+representative. Nor did I know that I should telephone to the papers to
+stop their press, while I motored down with the first interview from our
+delegate. Nor, again, could I realise that the pomp of the Prussians
+would be so suddenly replaced by pipes and walking-sticks and dogs. Nor
+did I even dream that the fifty-sixty horse-power Mercedes car in which
+General Liman von Sanders was still racing through the streets would
+soon be my property, bought and paid for in gold, complete with all
+accessories, including even the chauffeur's diary, and that I should
+garage it in a garden where a performing bear stood guard against any
+attempt at theft by the disorderly and demoralised Germans. These things
+are another story.
+
+
+  BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+  Telegrams: "Scholarly, London."      41 and 43 Maddox Street,
+  Telephone: 1883 Mayfair.             Bond Street, London, W. 1.
+                                      _October, 1919._
+
+  Mr. Edward Arnold's
+  AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS, 1919.
+
+  JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS.
+  By STEPHEN GWYNN.
+
+  _With Portrait.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+The "History of John Redmond's Last Years," by Stephen Gwynn, is in the
+first place an historical document of unusual importance. It is an
+account of Irish political events at their most exciting period, written
+by an active member of Mr. Redmond's party who was in the confidence of
+his chief. The preliminary story of the struggle with the House of Lords
+and the prolonged fight over Home Rule is described by a keen student of
+parliamentary action. For the period which began with the war Mr. Gwynn
+has had access to all Redmond's papers. He writes of Redmond's effort to
+lead Ireland into the war from the standpoint of a soldier as well as a
+member of parliament. The last chapter gives to the world, for the first
+time, a full account of the Irish Convention which sat for eight months
+behind closed doors, and in which Redmond's career reached its dramatic
+catastrophe.
+
+The interlocking of varying chains of circumstance, the parliamentary
+struggle, the rise of the rival volunteer forces, the raising of Irish
+divisions, the rebellion and its sequel, and, finally, the effect of
+bringing Irishmen together into conference--all this is vividly
+pictured, with increasing detail as the book proceeds. In the opening,
+two short chapters recall the earlier history of the Irish party and
+Redmond's part in it.
+
+But the main interest centres in the character of Redmond himself. Mr.
+Gwynn does not work to display his leader as a hero without faults and
+incapable of mistakes. He shows the man as he knew him and worked under
+him, traces his career through its triumphs to reverses, and through
+gallant recovery to final defeat. A great man is made familiar to the
+reader, in his wisdom, his magnanimity, and his love of country. The
+tragic waste of great opportunities is portrayed in a story which has
+the quality of drama in it. Beside the picture of John Redmond himself
+there is sketched the gallant and sympathetic figure of his brother,
+who, after thirty-five years of parliamentary service, died with the
+foremost wave of his battalion at the battle of Messines.
+
+
+  A MEDLEY OF MEMORIES.
+  By the Rt. Rev. Sir DAVID HUNTER BLAIR, Bart.
+
+  _With Illustrations.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+Sir David Hunter Blair, late Abbot of Fort Augustus, in the first part
+of these fifty years' recollections, deals with his childhood and youth
+in Scotland, and gives a picture full of varied interest of Scottish
+country house life a generation or more ago. Very vivid, too, is the
+account of early days at what was then the most famous private school in
+England; and the chapter on Eton under Balston and Hornby gives
+thumbnail sketches of a great many Etonians, school-contemporaries of
+the writer's, and bearing names afterwards very well known for one
+reason or another. Eton was followed by Magdalen; and undergraduate life
+in the Oxford of 1872 is depicted with a light hand and many amusing
+touches. There was foreign travel after the Oxford days; and two of the
+most pleasantly descriptive chapters of the book deal with Rome in the
+reign of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., both of which Pontiffs the author
+served as Private Chamberlain. There is much also that is fresh and
+interesting in the section treating of the lives and personalities of
+some of the great English Catholic families of by-gone days.
+
+Sir David entered the Benedictine Order at the age of twenty-five; and
+the latter half of the book is concerned with his life as co-founder,
+and member of the community of, the great Highland Abbey of Fort
+Augustus, of which he rose later to be the second abbot. The intimate
+account given in these pages of the life of a modern monk will be new to
+most readers, who will find it very interesting reading. The writer's
+monastic experiences embrace not only his own beautiful home in the
+Central Highlands, but Benedictine life and work in England, in Belgium,
+Germany and Portugal, and in South America. One of the most novel and
+attractive chapters in the book is that dealing with the work of the
+Order in the vast territory of Brazil.
+
+The volume is illustrated with an excellent portrait, and with some
+clever black-and-white drawings, the work of Mr. Richard Anson, one of
+the author's religious brethren, and a member of the Benedictine
+community at Caldey Abbey, in South Wales.
+
+
+  WITH THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION.
+  By Major M. H. DONOHOE,
+  Army Intelligence Corps.
+  Special Correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle."
+
+  _With numerous Illustrations and Map.  Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+Among the many "side-shows" of the Great War, few are so difficult for
+the average reader to understand as the operations in Northern Persia,
+an offshoot of the Bagdhad venture, which had for their object the
+policing of the warlike tribes in an area almost unknown to Europeans,
+and included the various attempts to reach and hold Baku, and so get
+command of the Caspian and Caucasia.
+
+The story of these operations--carried out by little, half-forgotten
+bodies of troops, mainly local levies who broke at the critical moment
+and left their British officers and N.C.O.'s to carry on alone--is one
+of the most amazing of the whole War, and comprises many episodes that
+recall the most stirring events of the Empire's pioneering days.
+
+By happy chance, Major M. H. Donohoe, the famous War Correspondent,
+whose work for the _Daily Chronicle_ in all the wars of the past twenty
+years is well known, was in this part of the world as a Major on the
+Intelligence Staff, work for which his knowledge of men and languages
+off the beaten tract peculiarly fitted him. He has written the story of
+these operations as he saw them, chiefly as a member of the Staff of the
+Military Mission under General Byron, known officially as the "Baghdad
+Party," and unofficially as the "Hush-Hush Brigade," which set forth
+early in 1918 to join the Column under General Dunsterville. Though
+there is little of fighting in the story, the book gives an admirable
+picture of the Empire's work done faithfully under difficulties, and
+glimpses of places and peoples that are almost unknown even to the most
+venturesome traveller. Indeed, it is largely as a book about an unknown
+land that this volume will attract, together with its little
+pen-portraits of men and little pen-pictures of adventures, that Kipling
+would love.
+
+
+  A PHYSICIAN IN FRANCE.
+  By Major-General Sir WILMOT HERRINGHAM, K.C.M.G., C.B.,
+  Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; Consulting Physician to the
+  Forces Overseas.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =15s. net.=
+
+How the war, as seen at close quarters, struck a man eminent in another
+profession than that of arms is the distinguishing feature of this
+volume of personal impressions. It is not, however, merely the outcome
+of a few weeks' sojourn or "trip to the trenches," with one eye on an
+expectant public, for the author has four times seen autumn fade into
+winter on the flat countryside of Flanders, and, when the war ended, was
+still at his post rendering invaluable services amidst unforgettable
+scenes. The author's comments on the day-to-day happenings are
+distinguished by a tone that is at once manly, reflective, and
+good-humoured. Medical questions are naturally prominent, but are dealt
+with largely in a manner that should interest the layman at the present
+time. Sir Wilmot was with Lord Roberts when he died. A very pleasing
+feature of the book is the constant revelation of the author's love of
+nature and sport, and his happy way of introducing such topics, together
+with descriptions of the country around him, makes a welcome contrast to
+the stern events which form the staple material of the book. There are
+some very amusing stories.
+
+
+  LONDON MEN IN PALESTINE.
+  By ROWLANDS COLDICOTT.
+
+  _With maps.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =12s. 6d. net.=
+
+This book embraces so much more than the ordinary war story that we have
+a peculiar difficulty in describing it in a few chosen words.
+
+The curtain lifts the day after the battle of Sheria, one of the minor
+fights in General Allenby's first campaign--those movements of troops
+which came only to a pause with the capture of Jerusalem. Gaza has just
+been taken. You are introduced to one of the companies of a London
+battalion serving in the East, of which company the author is commander.
+The reading of a few lines, the passing of a few moments, causes you
+(such is the power of right words) to be _attached_ to that company and
+to move in imagination with it across the dazzling plain. When you have
+tramped a few miles you begin to realise, perhaps for the first time,
+the heat and torment of a day's march in Philistia. It is not long
+before you feel that you, too, are adventuring with the toiling
+soldiers; with them you wonder where the halting place will be, what
+sort of bivouac you are likely to hit upon. By this time you will have
+met the officers--Temple, Trobus, Jackson--and are coming to have a
+nodding acquaintance with the men. Desire to compass the unknown, and
+sympathetic interest in the experiences of a company of your own
+country-men, Londoners footing it in a foreign land, now takes you
+irresistibly into the very heart of the tale, and you become one with
+the narrator. With him you wander among the ruins of Gaza, pass into
+southern Palestine, and come to the foot-hills of Judea. With him you
+slowly become conscious that the long series of marches is planned to
+culminate in an assault upon Jerusalem. Now you are part of a dusty
+column winding up into Judea by the Jerusalem road, looking hour by hour
+upon those natural phenomena that suggested the parables. "London Men in
+Palestine" brings all this home to you as if you were a passer-by. Next,
+the massing of troops about the Holy City is described, and you are
+given a distant view of the city itself. A chapter follows that
+describes the coming of the rains. Then you spend a night in an old
+rock-engendered fortress-village while troops pass through to the
+attack, the storm still at its height. A chapter follows that tells of a
+crowded day--too complex and full of incident here to be described. The
+book closes with an exciting description of a fight on the Mount of
+Olives.
+
+
+  MONS, ANZAC, AND KUT.
+  By an M.P.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =14s. net.=
+
+The writer of these remarkable memoirs, whose anonymity will not veil
+his identity from his friends, is a man well known, not only in England,
+but also abroad, and the pages are full of the writer's charm, and
+gaiety of spirit, and "courage of a day that knows not death." Day by
+day, in the thick of the most stirring events in history, he jotted down
+his impressions at first hand, and although parts of the diary cannot
+yet be published, enough is given to the world to form a graphic and
+very human history.
+
+Our author was present at the most critical part of the Retreat from
+Mons. He took part in the dramatic defence of Landrecies, and the stand
+at Compiegne. Wounded, and a prisoner, he describes his experiences in a
+German hospital and his subsequent recapture by the British during the
+Marne advance.
+
+The scene then shifts to Gallipoli, where he was present at the immortal
+first landing, surely one of the noblest pages of our history. He took
+part in the fierce fighting at Suvla Bay, and, owing to his knowledge of
+Turkish, he had amazing experiences during the Armistice arranged for
+the burial of the dead.
+
+Later, the author was in Mesopotamia, where he accompanied the relieving
+force in their heroic attempt to save Kut. On several occasions he was
+sent out between the lines to conduct negociations between the Turks and
+ourselves.
+
+"Mons, Anzac, and Kut" . . . A day and a day will pass, before the man
+and the moment meet to give us another book like this. We congratulate
+ourselves that the author survived to write it.
+
+
+  THE STRUGGLE IN THE AIR.
+  1914-1918.
+  By Major CHARLES C. TURNER (late R.A.F.).
+Assoc. Fellow R. Aer. Soc., Cantor Lectures on Aeronautics, 1909. Author
+of "Aircraft of To-day," "The Romance of Aeronautics," and (with Gustav
+Hamel) of "Flying: Some Practical Experiences," Editor of "Aeronautics,"
+etc., etc., etc.
+
+  _With Illustrations.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =15s. net.=
+
+Major Turner served in the flying arm throughout the great conflict,
+chiefly as an instructor of officers of the Royal Naval Air Service, and
+then of the Royal Air Force in the principles of flight, aerial
+navigation, and other subjects. He did much experimental work, made one
+visit to the Front, and was mentioned in dispatches. The Armistice found
+him in the position of Chief Instructor at No. 2 School of Aeronautics,
+Oxford.
+
+The classification of this book explains its scope and arrangement. The
+chapters are as follows:
+
+Capabilities of Aircraft; Theory in 1914; The flight to France and
+Baptism of Fire; Early Surprises; Fighting in the Air, 1914-1915; 1916;
+1917; 1918; Zeppelins and the Defence; Night Flying; The Zeppelin
+Beaten; Aeroplane Raids on England; Bombing the Germans; Artillery
+Observation; Reconnaissance and Photography; Observation Balloons;
+Aircraft and Infantry; Sea Aircraft; Heroic Experimenters; Casualties in
+the Third Arm; The Robinson Quality.
+
+
+  CAUGHT BY THE TURKS.
+  By FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+This book contains a full measure of adventure and excitement. The
+author, who is a Captain in the Indian Cavalry, was serving in the Air
+Force in Mesopotamia in 1915, and was captured through an accident to
+the aeroplane while engaged in a hazardous and successful attempt to cut
+the Turkish telegraph lines north and west of Baghdad, just before the
+Battle of Ctesiphon. Then came the horrors of the journey to
+Constantinople, during which the "terrible Turk" showed himself in his
+worst colours; but it was in Constantinople that the most thrilling
+episodes of his captivity had their origin. The story of the Author's
+first attempt to escape (which did not succeed) and of his subsequent
+lucky dash for freedom, is one of intense interest, and is told in a
+most vivid and dramatic way.
+
+
+  JOHN HUGH ALLEN
+  OF THE GALLANT COMPANY
+
+  A Memoir by his Sister INA MONTGOMERY.
+
+  _With Portrait.  1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+This book is the life-story of a young New Zealander who was killed in
+action at the Dardanelles in June, 1915. It is told mainly in his own
+letters and diaries--which have been supplemented, so far as was
+needful, with the utmost tact and discretion by his sister--and falls
+naturally into three principal stages. Allen spent four very strenuous
+years, 1907-1911, at Cambridge, where he occupied a prominent position
+among his contemporaries as an active member, and eventually President
+of the Union. Though undergraduate politics are not usually taken very
+seriously by the outside world, yet this side of Allen's Cambridge
+career has an interest far transcending the merely personal one.
+Possessed, as he was, of remarkable gifts, which he had cultivated by
+assiduous practice as a speaker and writer, and passionately interested
+in all that concerns the British Empire, and the present and future
+relations between the United Kingdom and the Overseas Dominions, his
+record may well stand as representative of the attitude of the _elite_
+of the New Zealand youth towards these vital matters in the period just
+preceding the war.
+
+After Cambridge, he returned for a time to New Zealand, where he
+resolved to make his permanent home, but came back to England in
+December, 1913, to complete his legal studies and get called to the bar,
+and was still in England when the war broke out. Consequently the second
+stage is the story of seven months' experience as a lieutenant in the
+13th Battalion of the Worcesters, and his letters of this period give an
+attractive, and intensely graphic account of the making of the new army.
+Finally, he was despatched, with a few other selected officers, to the
+Dardanelles, arrived on May 25th at Cape Helles, and was attached to the
+Essex regiment. The last stage, brief, glorious, and terrible, lasted
+only twelve days but, brief as it was, he had time to draw an
+enthralling picture of the unexampled horrors of this particular phase
+of trench-warfare. The book is steeped, from beginning to end, in a
+sober but fervent enthusiasm; and the cult of the Empire, in its noblest
+form, has seldom been as finely exemplified as by the life and death of
+John Allen.
+
+
+  NOEL ROSS AND HIS WORK.
+  Edited by HIS PARENTS.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+A series of charming sketches by a young New Zealander, who died in
+December, 1917, on the threshold of a brilliant literary career. Noel
+Ross was one of those daring Anzacs who made the landing on Gallipoli.
+Wounded in the early days of the terrible fighting there, he was
+discharged from the Army, came to London, rejoined there, and obtained a
+commission in the Royal Field Artillery. Afterwards he became a valued
+member of the Editorial Staff of _The Times_, on which his genius was at
+once recognized and highly appreciated. Much of his work appeared in
+_The Times_, and he was also a contributor to _Punch_. In collaboration
+with his father, Captain Malcolm Ross, the New Zealand War
+Correspondent, he was the author of "Light and Shade in War," of which
+the _Daily Mail_ said: "It is full of Anzac virility, full of Anzac
+buoyancy, and surcharged with that devil-may-care humour that has so
+astounded us jaded peoples of an older world."
+
+His writings attracted the attention of such capable writers as Rudyard
+Kipling, and Sir Ian Hamilton, who said he reminded him in many ways of
+that gallant and brilliant young Englishman, Rupert Brooke.
+
+
+  WITH THE BRITISH INTERNED IN SWITZERLAND.
+  By Lieut.-Colonel H. P. PICOT, C.B.E.,
+
+Late Military Attache, 1914-16, and British Officer in Charge of the
+Interned, 1916-18.
+
+  _1 vol.  Demy 8vo.  Cloth._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+In this volume Colonel Picot tells us, in simple and lucid fashion, how
+some thousands of our much tried and suffering countrymen were
+transferred--to the eternal credit of Switzerland--from the harsh
+conditions of captivity to a neutral soil, there to live in comparative
+freedom amid friendly surroundings. He describes in some detail the
+initiative taken by the Swiss Government on behalf of the Prisoners of
+War in general, and the negociations which preceded the acceptance by
+the Belligerent States of the principle of Internment, and then recounts
+the measures taken by that Government for the hospitalization of some
+30,000 Prisoners of War, and the organization of a Medical Service for
+the treatment of the sick and wounded.
+
+Turning, then, more particularly to the group of British prisoners, he
+deals with their discipline, their camp life, the steps taken for
+spiritual welfare, and the organization of sports and recreations, and
+an interesting chapter records the efforts made to afford them technical
+training in view of their return to civil life.
+
+The book also comprises a resume of the formation and development of the
+Bread Bureau at Berne, which ultimately, in providing bread for 100,000
+British prisoners of war in Germany, doubtless saved countless lives;
+and a description of the activities of the British Legation Red Cross
+Organization, both of which institutions were founded by Lady Grant
+Duff, wife of H.M.'s Minister at Berne.
+
+Colonel Picot throws many interesting sidelights on life in Switzerland
+in war-time--diplomatic, social, and artistic--and his modest and
+self-effacing narrative dwells generously on the devotion of all those
+who, whether by appointment or chance, were associated with him in his
+beneficent labours.
+
+It is hoped that this account of a special phase in the history of our
+countrymen will prove of interest to that large public who have shown in
+countless ways their sympathy with all that concerns the welfare of
+Prisoners of War.
+
+
+  A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY EIGHTY YEARS AGO.
+  By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK,
+  Author of "Tante," "The Encounter," etc.
+
+  _Demy 8vo.  Cloth._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+With exquisite literary art which the reading public has recognised in
+"Tante" and others of her novels, the author of this book tells of a
+great lady's childhood in picturesque Brittany in the middle of the last
+century. It covers that period of life around which the tenderest and
+most vivid memories cluster; a childhood set in a district of France
+rich in romance, and rich in old loyalties to manners and customs of a
+gracious era that is irrevocably in the past.
+
+Charming vignettes of character, marvellous descriptions of houses,
+costumes and scenery, short stories in silhouette of pathetic or
+humorous characters--these are also in the book.
+
+And through it all the author is seen re-creating a background, which
+has profoundly influenced one of the finest literary artists of the last
+century.
+
+
+  GARDENS: THEIR FORM AND DESIGN.
+  By the Viscountess WOLSELEY.
+
+  _With numerous Illustrations by_ Miss M. G. CAMPION.
+
+  _1 vol.  Medium 8vo._  =21s. net.=
+
+The present volume, which is beautifully got up and illustrated, deals
+with form and line in the garden, a subject comparatively new in
+England.
+
+Lady Wolseley's book suggests simple, inexpensive means--the outcome of
+practical knowledge and experience--for achieving charming results in
+gardens of all sizes. Her College of Gardening at Glynde has shown Lady
+Wolseley how best to make clear to those who have never before thought
+about garden design, some of the complex subjects embraced by it, such
+as Water Gardens, Rock Gardens, Treillage, Paved Gardens, Surprise
+Gardens, etc. The book contains many decorative and imaginative drawings
+by Miss Mary G. Campion, as well as a large number of practical diagrams
+and plans, which further illustrate the author's ideas and add to the
+value of the book.
+
+
+  MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS.
+  SIXTH SERIES.
+  By the Rt. Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bt.,
+  F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+  _With photogravure frontispiece.  Large Crown 8vo._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+It is some years since the fifth series of "Memories of the Months" was
+issued, but the demand for Sir Herbert Maxwell's charming volumes
+continues unabated. Every year rings new changes on the old order of
+Nature, and the observant eye can always find fresh features on the face
+of the Seasons. Sir Herbert Maxwell goes out to meet Nature on the moor
+and loch, in garden and forest, and writes of what he sees and feels. It
+is a volume of excellent gossip, the note-book of a well-informed and
+high-spirited student of Nature, where the sportsman's ardour is
+tempered always with the sympathy of the lover of wild things, and the
+naturalist's interest is leavened with the humour of a cultivated man of
+the world. This is what gives the work its abiding charm, and makes
+these memories fill the place of old friends on the library bookshelf.
+
+
+  SINGLE-HANDED CRUISING.
+  By FRANCIS B. COOKE,
+  Author of "The Corinthian Yachtsman's Handbook," "Cruising Hints," Etc.
+
+  _Illustrated._  =10s. 6d. net.=
+
+The contents of this volume being based upon the author's many years'
+practical experience of single-handed sailing, are sure to be acceptable
+to those who, either from choice or necessity, make a practice of
+cruising alone. Of the four thousand or more yachts whose names appear
+in Lloyd's Register, quite a considerable proportion are small craft
+used for the most part for week-end cruising, and single-handed sailing
+is a proposition that the owner of a week-ender cannot afford altogether
+to ignore. To be dependent upon the assistance of friends, who may leave
+one in the lurch at the eleventh hour, is a miserable business that can
+only be avoided by having a yacht which one is capable of handling
+alone. The ideal arrangement is to have a vessel of sufficient size to
+accommodate one or two guests and yet not too large to be sailed
+single-handed at a pinch. In this book Mr. Cooke gives some valuable
+hints on the equipment and handling of such a craft, which, it may be
+remarked, can, in the absence of paid hands, be maintained at
+comparatively small cost.
+
+
+  MODERN ROADS.
+  By H. PERCY BOULNOIS, M. Inst. C.E., F.R. San. Inst., etc.
+
+  _Demy 8vo._  =16s. net.=
+
+The author is well known as one of the leading authorities on
+road-making, and he deals at length with Traffic, Water-bound Macadam
+Roads, Surface Tarring, Bituminous Roads, Waves and Corrugations,
+Slippery Roads, Paved Streets (Stone and Wood, etc.), Concrete Road
+Construction, etc.
+
+
+  A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS.
+  By Dr. M. R. JAMES,
+  Provost of Eton College.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =4s. 6d. net.=
+
+The Provost of Eton needs no introduction as a past master of the art of
+making our flesh creep, and those who have enjoyed his earlier books may
+rest assured that his hand has lost none of its blood-curdling cunning.
+Neither is it necessary to remind them that Dr. James's inexhaustible
+stories of archaeological erudition furnish him with a unique power of
+giving his gruesome tales a picturesque setting, and heightening by
+their literary and antiquarian charm the exquisite pleasure derived from
+thrills of imaginary terror. This latter quality has never been more
+happily displayed than in the stories contained in the present volume,
+which we submit with great confidence to the judgment of all who
+appreciate--and who does not?--a good old-fashioned hair-raising ghost
+story.
+
+
+  New Editions.
+
+  GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY.
+  By Dr. M. R. JAMES,
+  Provost of Eton College.
+
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo._  =5s. net.=
+
+
+  MORE GHOST STORIES.
+  By Dr. M. R. JAMES.
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo._  =5s. net.=
+
+
+  THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN.
+  By Captain HARRY GRAHAM,
+  Author of "Ruthless Rhymes," etc.
+
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =3s. 6d. net.=
+
+
+  THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN.
+  By Captain HARRY GRAHAM.
+
+  _New Edition.  Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =3s. 6d. net.=
+
+
+  _The Modern Educator's Library._
+  General Editor: Professor A. A. COCK.
+
+The present age is seeing an unprecedented advance in educational theory
+and practice; its whole outlook on the ideals and methods of teaching is
+being widened. The aim of this new series is to present the considered
+views of teachers of wide experience, and eminent ability, upon the
+changes in method involved in this development, and upon the problems
+which still remain to be solved, in the several branches of teaching
+with which they are most intimately connected. It is hoped, therefore,
+that these volumes will be instructive not only to teachers, but to all
+who are interested in the progress of education.
+
+Each volume contains an index and a comprehensive bibliography of the
+subject with which it deals.
+
+
+  EDUCATION: ITS DATA AND FIRST PRINCIPLES.
+  By T. PERCY NUNN, M.A., D.Sc.,
+
+Professor of Education in the University of London; Author of "The Aims
+and Achievements of Scientific Method," "The Teaching of Algebra," Etc.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+Dr. Nunn's volume really forms an introduction to the whole series, and
+deals with the fundamental questions which lie at the root of
+educational inquiry. The first is that of the aims of education. These,
+he says, are always correlative to ideals of life, and, as ideals of
+life are eternally at variance, their conflict will be reflected in
+educational theories. The individualism of post-reformation Europe
+gradually gave way to a reaction culminating in Hegel, which pictured
+the state as the superentity of which the single life is but a fugitive
+element. The logical result of this Hegelian ideal the world has just
+seen, and educators of to-day have to decide whether to foster this
+sinister tradition or to help humanity to escape from it to something
+better. What we need is a doctrine which, while admitting the importance
+of the social element in man, reasserts the importance of the
+individual.
+
+This notion of individuality as the ideal of life is worked out at
+length, and on the results of this investigation are based the
+conclusions which are reached upon the practical problem of embodying
+this ideal in teaching. Among other subjects, the author deals with
+Routine and Ritual, Play, Nature and Nurture, Imitation, Instinct; and
+there is a very illuminating last chapter on "The School and the
+Individual."
+
+
+  MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
+  By SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc., Litt.D.
+
+Late Head Mistress of the North London Collegiate School for Girls
+Author of "Educational Ends," etc.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+In this book, Mrs. Bryant, whose writings on educational subjects are
+widely known, takes the view that in order to produce the best result
+over the widest area, the teaching of morality through the development
+of religious faith, and its teaching by direct appeal to self-respect,
+reason, sympathy and common sense, are both necessary. In religion, more
+than in anything else, different individuals must follow different paths
+to the goal.
+
+Upon this basis the book falls into four parts. The first deals with the
+processes of spiritual self-realisation by means of interest in
+knowledge and art, and of personal affections and social interest, which
+all emerge in the development of conscience. The second part treats of
+the moral ideal and how it is set forth by means of heroic romance and
+history, and in the teaching of Aristotle, to build up the future
+citizen. The third presents the religious ideal, its beginnings and the
+background of ideas implied by it, together with suggestions for study
+of the Bible and the lives of the Saints. In the fourth part the problem
+of the reasoned presentment of religious truths is dealt with in detail.
+
+There is no doubt that this book makes a very considerable addition to
+what has already been written on the subject of religious education.
+
+
+  THE TEACHING OF MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.
+  By H. G. ATKINS, M.A.,
+
+Professor of German in King's College, University of London, and
+University Reader in German,
+
+  AND
+
+  H. L. HUTTON, M.A.,
+
+Senior Modern Language Master at Merchant Taylors' School.
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+The first part of this book deals with the School, the second with the
+University. While each part is mainly written by one of the authors,
+they have acted in collaboration and have treated the two subjects as
+interdependent. They have referred only briefly to the main features of
+the past history, and have chiefly tried to give a broad survey of the
+present position of modern language teaching, and the desirable policy
+for the future.
+
+As regards the School, conclusions are first reached as to the relative
+amount of time to be devoted to modern languages in the curriculum, and
+the various branches of the subject--its organisation and methods, the
+place of grammar and the history of the language--are then discussed. A
+chapter is devoted to the questions relating to the second foreign
+language, and the study is linked up with the University course.
+
+In the second part Professor Atkins traces the different ends to which
+the School course continued at the University may lead, with special
+reference to the higher Civil Service Examinations and to the training
+of Secondary School Teachers.
+
+The general plan of the book was worked out before the publication of
+the report of the Government Committee appointed by the Prime Minister
+to enquire into the position of Modern Languages in the educational
+system of Great Britain. With the report, however, the authors'
+conclusions were in the main found to agree, and the text of the book
+has been brought up-to-date by references to the report which have been
+made in footnotes as well as in places in the text. No further
+modifications were thought to be necessary.
+
+The book will be found to give a comprehensive review of the whole field
+of modern language teaching and some valuable help towards the solution
+of its problems.
+
+
+  THE CHILD UNDER EIGHT.
+  By E. R. MURRAY,
+
+Vice-Principal of Maria Grey Training College; Author of "Froebel as a
+Pioneer in Modern Psychology," etc.,
+
+  AND
+
+  HENRIETTA BROWN SMITH, LL.A.,
+
+Lecturer in Education, Goldsmith's College, University of London; Editor
+of "Education by Life."
+
+  _Crown 8vo.  Cloth._  =6s. net.=
+
+The authors of this book deal with the young child at the outset of its
+education, a stage the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. The
+volume is written in two parts, the first dealing with the child in the
+Nursery and Kindergarten, and the second with the child in the State
+School. Much that is said is naturally applicable to either form of
+School, and, where this is so, repetition has been avoided by means of
+cross references.
+
+The authors find that the great weakness of English education in the
+past has been want of a definite aim to put before the children, and the
+want of a philosophy for the teacher. Without some understanding of the
+meaning and purpose of life the teacher is at the mercy of every fad,
+and is apt to exalt method above principle. This book is an attempt to
+gather together certain recognised principles, and to show in the light
+of actual experience how these may be applied to existing circumstances.
+They put forward a strong plea for the recognition of the true value of
+Play, the "spontaneous activity in all directions," and for courage and
+faith on the part of the teacher to put this recognition into practice;
+and they look forward to the time when the conditions of public
+Elementary Schools, from the Nursery School up, will be such--in point
+of numbers, space, situation and beauty of surroundings--that parents of
+any class will gladly let their children attend them.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *
+
+_Further volumes in this series are in preparation and will be published
+shortly._
+
+
+  FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MUSIC.
+  By F. J. READ, Mus. Doc. (Oxon.)
+
+Formerly Professor at the Royal College of Music.
+
+  _Crown 8vo._  =1s. 6d.=
+
+This book is the result of the author's long experience as Professor of
+Theory at the Royal College of Music, and is the clearest and most
+concise treatise of the kind that has yet been written.
+
+    "It is a useful little book, covering a wider field than any
+    other of the kind that we know."--_The Times._
+
+    "It is calculated to quicken interest in various subjects
+    outside the normal scope of an elementary musical grammar. The
+    illustrated chapter on orchestral instruments, for instance, is
+    a welcome and stimulating innovation."--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+
+  LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 1.
+
+
+  =Transcriber's Notes:=
+  hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the original
+  Page 21, Azizieh possibly should be Aziziah, but left as is
+  Page 58, no common languge ==> no common language
+  Page 81, smallest detail, for month ==> smallest detail, for months
+  Page 85, supected of something ==> suspected of something
+  Page 123, Mr. Morgenthan ==> Mr. Morgenthau
+  Announcements at end, page 3, Bagdhad venture ==> Baghdad venture
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Caught by the Turks, by Francis Yeats-Brown
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